


An Accident of Time

by Pickitup



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-11
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-17 20:26:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 42,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10601592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pickitup/pseuds/Pickitup
Summary: Boys weren’t omegas. Not outside of blue movies, or bluer songs, at least, the kind of anecdotes too ribald even for soldiers to tell. Girls were omegas, sometimes, but rarely, even in those days. Dying breeds, he guessed. When he was the asset it had stopped entirely, he had thought it all over: feels sick thinking of what they would have done to exploit him if he had suffered back then. But now, 2014, eating three meals a day, sleeping regularly in a safe bed, the old ghost has come back.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Write the a/b/o fic you want to see in the world. Set after The Winter Soldier.
> 
> The title comes from Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse. I know where this is going and it's going to be an epic route to a happy ending.

Bucky feels like he’s been running for as long as he can remember being alive. Longer, maybe, given those black holes which swim on the edge of his consciousness whenever he tries too hard to summon the past. 

The treadmill is his constant. Cheap, municipal gyms where no one looks too closely. Everyone has a story here, and they’re probably no different to Bucky’s: everyone’s escaping something. Doesn’t matter how far you run, how much you sweat, his feet remind him. You can’t get away from what you’ve done. You can’t get away from who you are. He comes here every day. Runs. Remembers. Marks a line in his notebook for every victim he can recall. 

The sweat on the walls drips on his back as he runs, soaks into his shoulder. He grimaces as he looks around. Dark painted walls which don’t hide the cracks in the paintwork, the creeping damp along the ceiling. Full of men – and women – who don’t make eye contact. He wears a hoodie when he works out, never showers there, never lets anyone see his arm. His routine is comforting. Running, planking, lifting, spinning. Occasionally someone will try and offer him advice on his form, and he just doesn’t get into it, gestures at his headphones, looks down, mumbles Russian. It occasionally makes a spasm of mirth bubble up and he has to dampen it down, wants to tell them ‘son, I’ve been lifting since before you were born,’ even as he looks like he’s thirty if he’s a day. A baby-faced killer if ever there was one. 

His heart rate is higher than it should be, higher than it is normally for this level of exertion. He could run for hours if necessary, on nothing more than a protein shake and an hour of half-sleep, eyes slitted and ready to alert as soon as something moved. But he can feel it coming, earlier than it should be, and sends a text ’45 minutes left in my workout’ before pocketing his phone back in his loose shorts, forcing himself to carry on as normal. Climbing and racing, climbing and racing, until his thigh muscles shake and he gets off to stretch and stretch, meets the eyes of one of the trainers and looks away, fast.

He’s waiting outside the gym when Bucky leaves, sweating through his clothes, hood up, shoulders hunched. They fall into step together, casual to any onlooker: the slight boy with freshly buzzed hair, new Jordans, the broad man with the duffel bag slung across his chest, greying sweatpants and battered Nikes. 

‘How’ve you been,’ the kid, Jimmy, asks. Bucky’s referred to him as Jimmy since the second week of their arrangement. The kid looks like a Jimmy, could have been Bucky in another life, running errands, on the outskirts of something bigger, wanting to get out more than anything. Probably doesn’t even know where these things can lead, wouldn’t believe Bucky if he told him.

‘Okay,’ Bucky shrugs, looks both ways as they cross the road, cautious. Jimmy crouches when they make it to the pavement, ties his laces, looks up at Bucky.

‘Stay good, man, see you in a month.’ Straightens and he’s gone. Bucky watches him round the corner, disappear into the distance, before he ducks down, picks up the jar, pockets it. Takes a different route home.

His hands are shaking by the time he lets himself through the front door, but he forces himself to shower, takes steadying breaths in and out, takes himself outside of his body like he used to whenever they put him under. 

His knees buckle as he steps out of the tub, and he catches himself on the sink, his hand shatters the cheap enamel slightly and he grimaces. That will need to be fixed, but not now. He opens Jimmy’s jar, tips three of the large white tablets into his mouth and gulps straight from the faucet. The chalky aftertaste clings: he can feel them burn their way down his oesophagus, right the way to the base of his spine, where they sit, radiating heat. He stares at his reflection through the condensation, his wet hair long and tangled, his pupils blown. He tries to count backwards from one hundred, wait for the pills to kick in, but he can’t. You’ve been here before, he reminds himself. You’ve lived through this before. Maybe he’s weaker now; regardless, it doesn’t help. He can feel the itch all over his skin, runs cold water over his wrists until he can breathe easier. Drops his towel from his waist and goes to stand in front of the freezer, the cheap fan on full blast, his own rigged up attempt at air conditioning.

He’s one hundred years old, give or take, but his heat still hits him like a sucker punch, sitting deep in the hollows of his bones, waiting to overwhelm him. His dick is heavy against his thigh, but he won’t touch it, wills it to stop. The last bunch of suppressants that Jimmy got him worked, more or less, but his heat shouldn’t have come on so soon. That’s what happens when you’re a man out of time, he guesses. Like whooping cough, or whatever, times have changed, whoever heard of an omega in this day and age, outside of porn, or tumblr. Most doctors wouldn’t even know what to do with him, and he can’t risk sticking around long enough with one to find a specialist. So he works with what he has. With who he has. Jimmy.

He pulls a blanket and cushion from the couch, settles in front of the fridge. There’s never enough food in it to worry about it going off. Even the chill doesn’t keep him cool. The pills will knock him out soon, and he chews ice, waits, doesn’t think about Steve. Somewhere out there. In another city. Not thinking about Bucky. He closes his eyes, overly aware of the crawling on his skin, the slick gathering between his thighs, the urge to leave the apartment, to find someone to help. But. He’s the Winter Soldier. He’s suffered worse than this. His hands are fists at his side, clenching and releasing as he waits, until finally, he sleeps.

***

The heat has broken by the morning. He’s obviously got up in the night, and he wakes on the couch, sticky, and achy, but cool, his mind back to its normal self. It’s some time before 8am he guesses, he has time to wash again, to take more pills, to put on his uniform and go to the cleaning job he does Saturdays and Sundays, at the boujis cocktail bar that he remembers as a hole in the wall burger place. 

He’s grateful it was so brief this time. He marks a red circle on his calendar and frowns as he realises they’re getting more frequent. He hadn’t been on heat in years, not since before the war. The malnutrition of rations put a stop to that, then the experimentation, or so he thought, and could anyone blame him if he felt a sigh of relief, a moment of gladness that he would never experience that shame again. Boys weren’t omegas. Not outside of blue movies, or bluer songs, at least, the kind of anecdotes too ribald even for soldiers to tell. Girls were omegas, sometimes, but rarely, even in those days. Dying breeds, he guessed. When he was the asset it had stopped entirely, he had thought it all over: feels sick thinking of what they would have done to exploit him if he had suffered back then. But now, eating three meals a day, sleeping regularly in a safe bed, the old ghost has come back.

He scrubs and scrubs in the shower. No beta will smell him, and if another alpha does so what, his sheer size alone will back off any threat. It’s been a hand on the small of his back in the gym, under the pretence of helping him. A leg pressed against him on the subway, his eyes falling inevitably to the stranger’s crotch, experiencing a sick thrill even as he tries not to look. The waitress who brings him free drinks even though he knows no alcohol will weaken his self-control. It’s harder to ignore kindness but he has to, knows enough of Steve to know Steve won’t give up searching for him if he can help it, and how many male omegas in their old neighbourhood can there really be. He’s been in Brooklyn far longer than he should have been, by rights. Tries to move on periodically but finds he can’t quite let go of the smells, the bustle. The way if he squints he can overlay what he knew on what there is now. The dance halls, the shops, the church, his ma, Steve. Always Steve.

He lets himself in to the bar, methodically strips his clothes to put on his overalls, runs the hot water into the bucket and starts to clean. He can lose himself in cleaning. Women’s work, his da always said. Omega’s work. Bucky clenches his teeth as he mops, reminds himself they’re all dead and buried decades ago. His sisters too, laid out in the churchyard where he doesn’t leave flowers. No clues as to where he is. A ghost.

He’s whistling tunelessly to himself when he hears the door go, presumes it’s the manager come to check on something, so looks half-heartedly, feels his heart rate speed up even before his brain really clocks who it is.

‘Steve.’ He’s taller somehow, framed in the doorway. Taller than in Bucky’s memories at least where the old Steve was the one he knew for longest, slight and sickly but alpha. Wearing the anger in a way Bucky never knew how to do. It was always the bitter irony of their friendship. Little Steve, too asthmatic to pop a knot even if he wanted to, full of fight and hot and righteous rage. Bucky, womanising and athletic, but full of shameful wanting, to be dominated, to be owned, to be taken care of. 

‘Buck,’ his hands are up, palms open, I am safe, I come in peace, they say. ‘You remember who I am?’ 

‘I remember enough to know I’m gonna have to run,’ his tone is sad, he doesn’t want to run. He likes his gym, his crappy apartment, the regular pill delivery. Piles upon piles of notebooks.

‘That’s not your only choice,’ Steve makes no move towards him. He looks haggard, or as haggard as Steve can look. Several days of stubble has grown in, and his beard looks patchy. His clothes are deliberately casual, the kind of man your eyes slide over after a moment if you even notice him at all.

‘I do, I do have to run,’ Bucky says. He will have to clean out his apartment, wipe his prints, cut his hair and take a new identity. ‘I’m not gonna let you take me in. It’ll destroy me. It’ll destroy you.’

Steve takes his sunglasses off, slowly comes towards him. ‘I’m not giving you up. I don’t want anyone else to know you’re here. No questioning, no examinations, nothing. I just want to know you’re safe, and then I’ll go.’

‘Yeah, right, Captain America’s not taking in the Winter Soldier. Sure. Last time you saw me I tried to kill you.’

‘You look good, Buck.’

It’s as if he doesn’t hear Bucky, chooses not to, pulled towards him, those blue eyes as clear and bright as they always were. The rest of him has changed, but that face, that stare, the way he straightens his shoulders before he goes into battle. It’s the same as it ever was. 

‘Sure, I look good,’ Bucky snorts. He’s holding the mop close to him, as if it can protect him against Steve’s steady approach. Steve looks wary, eyes darting between Bucky, the mop, and the door.

‘What, you think I’m going to use this as a weapon or something?’ Bucky snorts. 

Steve is close enough to smell, suddenly, and the force of it hits him so he closes his eyes for a moment, breathes deeply, riding out a sudden wave of vertigo like he’s falling back in time. 

‘It’s really you,’ Steve almost sounds confused as he says it. ‘You’re really here. You-’ and then he’s taken the mop out of Bucky’s hands, and he’s on his knees, his head at Bucky’s waist as he inhales and inhales. It should be awkward, or uncomfortable, but it’s not. Steve smells of home. He looks down at the blond head, twists his hands in his hair and takes deep shuddering breaths.

‘I’m not going back with you.’

‘You don’t have to, Buck, I mean it, I came here alone, no one has any idea I’ve found you.’ His voice is muffled against Bucky’s skin but the tone is familiar, the way he’s so convinced of his own righteousness that he just keeps talking and talking until he wears you down. 

‘Is that why you have that piece of crap excuse for a beard,’ it’s like he’s trying on an old skin, seeing if it fits still. ‘Cause I don’t wanna be seen with you while you’re looking like a hobo. It’s no better than that blue lycra thing you used to insist on wearing. I always said you were too showy for a superhero.’

Steve is laughing, he can feel him, or he’s crying, he doesn’t know which, and then he pulls Steve up by the shoulders, until they’re face-to-face. ‘I can’t go back with you.’

‘I know, I know. I just wanted to see you, I’ve been trying to find you for two years now. Everyone else has given up. And when I thought you might be here, when I thought I’d found you again, I sent them all on a wild goose-chase. They all think the winter soldier is in Prague.’ He looks a little shamefaced but there’s a proud set to his jaw, underneath it. He thinks he’s doing what’s right.

‘How did you know I was here.’

‘It was a rumour. A hunch. I have people.’

Bucky cocks an eyebrow, shakes his head, goes back to his mopping. ‘If I’m not running I need to finish this up. Go sit somewhere else.’ He watches greedily as Steve hops over the bar, sits on the stool behind it, grinning through his patchy beard at his victory, even as Bucky knows how short-lived it will be.

‘As if Captain America has people…’

‘I do! Some, at least. I’m not a total idiot.’

‘Sure, not a total idiot, I guess,’ he rolls his eyes up to heaven, to an imaginary audience for Steve’s benefit, that old skin again. ‘He tells me he’s not a total idiot. As if I haven’t witnessed some of the stupidest plans anyone has ever cooked up, as if I didn’t know him when he was four-foot-nothing of skinned knees and the sharpest elbows anyone ever had, as if I didn’t know the real him.’

Steve rubs his eyes with the back of his hand, they’re wet again. ‘Hurry up. I’ve got one day, that’s it. Then I’ll have to go back.’

‘And then what?’

‘Then we wait, and we see if anyone notices, and then I find more reasons to be back in the city.’

‘Pretty presumptuous, Rogers,’ he rolls the word round his mouth, enjoying how it feels. ‘You just swan back into my life after years of me running and what? We’re gonna play happy families again. As if you’ve forgotten all about the deaths and destruction all over my files.’ He keeps his tone light, feels his own eyes water, refuses to rub them and lets the tear sit on his cheekbone, blinks it away. Busies himself over the sink. 

‘Buck, no. I.’ 

He chances a glance up: Steve looks wrecked, exhausted and old in a way he’s never looked in any of the newspaper articles Bucky pores over. The tumblr posts. The tweets. The selfies with him on duty or off, like the man never deserves any kind of private life. He even has a fucken hashtag – CapSelfie.

Bucky puts him out of his misery then, ‘If we can get through today, if no one shows up at my door tomorrow, or this weekend, or next week, then we’ll see where we are. The first sign anyone else knows, I’m gone, and you’ll never find me again.’

‘Oh I’d find you,’ Steve says, with a determined jut of that famous jaw.

‘Sure, pal, like you found me so easily this time. Only took you two years.’

‘I know what I’m looking for now,’ Steve says.

Bucky slants a curious glance at him, even as he wrings out the cloth, wipes the surfaces down with more strength than the job needs. 

‘You smell good, Buck,’ there’s so much longing in that tone that Bucky sways, holds on to the sink, carefully, so carefully. A flash of the shattered enamel, the chalky pills going down his throat.

‘I’m on suppressants. You shouldn’t be able to smell a thing.’

‘But I can,’ Steve says simply. ‘I’d forgotten what it was like.’ He’s behind Bucky, silently, so quickly, that alien grace he has, that reminder that he’s not quite human. He carefully slides his arms round Bucky’s waist from behind, waiting for Bucky to startle and run, Bucky supposes. He wants to, of course, but mostly he wants to just sigh, lean back into Steve’s body, tilt his head back to Steve’s shoulder so he can mouth down his neck.

‘You smell like Saturday afternoons at the movies. Like dessert on my birthday.’ Steve murmurs into Bucky’s neck and he lets himself go boneless as Steve licks the skin there, imagines his pulse fluttering into Steve’s mouth, urging him to bite Bucky, to take him. 

Bucky steels himself, shrugs Steve off, pretends it doesn’t matter, that he’s not affected even though Steve must be able to smell he is. ‘I gotta finish this up. If I’m not running, I don’t want to lose my job.’ He snorts, ‘Like the old days, losing my job because of you, showing up and begging me to come on some adventure.’ 

Steve reluctantly steps back, but stands there scenting the air, eyes closed. By rights the room should smell of bleach and that cloying lily scent they pump in. It’s a sweatbox of a place, with fake mid-century furniture everywhere, $18 cocktails called ‘The Lindy’ which promise to put a hop in your step!. This fetishisation of the past has never made sense to him. He’s glad to have left behind all the illnesses that nearly killed Steve, horrified that some parents nowadays ignore the medical leaps forward that could save their children, anti-vaxxers or whatever they’re called. Jackasses, more like.

‘How’ve you been,’ Steve says, smiling a little himself at how much and how little is in that question.

‘Huh, you know, on the run, sleeping in homeless shelters, getting by, hiding from the government, the Russians, those superheroes you hang around with.’ Remembering. Atoning.

Steve huffs out a laugh, ‘Sounds eventful. Have you been seeing a doctor?’

Bucky looks at him, and Steve flushes, looks away. ‘Yeah because a guy with a giant metal tech arm shows up asking about a condition that seemed to die out in the 1970s, and you’re not gonna get a little beep on your ‘BuckyDar’ app or whatever, next thing I know I’m in prison.’

‘No one else knows you’re an omega,’ Steve says softly. ‘You think I’d tell them something like that?’

No, Bucky wants to say, no I don’t. But all he says is, ‘It’s gotta be in my file somewhere. I didn’t see it in the Smithsonian exhibit, sure, bit too saucy for that, but it’s got to be on record.’

‘You hadn’t had a heat since before the war, you got through sign-up okay-’ Steve’s relentless optimism again.

‘Only because I took so many suppressants even you couldn’t scent me.’

He remembers those fears, of joining up, of what would happen if he shared barracks with an alpha. By rights the army would be full of them, dominant men barking out orders, and he’d be helpless to ignore them. What if a German soldier caught his scent, what would happen to him. What he might do, what he might want to do.

But maybe the pills had worked: he certainly couldn’t smell anyone else like him there, or any other alphas. He hadn’t even been able to scent Steve at first, after the change, had wondered if it had fixed everything about him, had got rid of that old biological throwback, turned him normal.

‘We’d never be normal, you can’t blame our biology for that.’

Bucky hasn’t realised he’s spoken aloud, feels unnerved suddenly at Steve’s closeness. He throws him his keys, on a whim, and Steve catches them. ‘You know where I live?’

Steve nods, cautious, slow, as if he thinks Bucky might lose it at that level of surveillance. But he’s just relieved in a way. ‘Go wait for me there. Hood up, sunglasses on. No one will see you: it’s a whole mess of people not seeing each other.’

‘I know how to blend in, Buck, I’ve done this one hundred times.’

‘You’re more famous now, you’ve gotta be more careful, pal. Don’t want a CapSelfie popping up outside the bar, people putting two and two together about me. I’m just Antonio Spirelli. I pay my rent, I do my job, and I don’t talk to no one.’

‘You’re Italian now?’

‘Hey, we’re all immigrants one way or another, thought I’d shed the Irish along with the Russian. Wish my skin had got the message, I still sunburn to fuck.’

Steve laughs, ‘You’re talking to me about sunburn? Captain America, strong as anything, except when it comes to bit of mild sunshine on a spring day.’

‘Just putting the red in the red, white, and blue, Steve.’ Trying on that easy rapport they used to have. It’s got to be seventy years ago in reality but it feels more like five, like it’s teasing at his consciousness, an old song you start singing along to and the lyrics come back by the time the chorus rolls around again.

‘I’ll see you,’ Steve salutes, mockingly, leaves Bucky and as the door swings closed the place suddenly feels huge, and empty. Maybe he wanted Steve to find him. Maybe he knew Steve would, always knew it deep down. Why else stay in Brooklyn. Like leaving gingerbread crumbs all over the place: even his apartment overlooks the old children’s home. Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. If he wants to stay hidden he can give Steve this one day, and then he’s gone again. Europe maybe. London. Not here.

***

The smell of coffee hits him when he lets himself in to his apartment, pancakes too. He tries to see the place through Steve’s eyes. It’s small, shabby, but it’s what he can afford, what he feels okay with. The new beds, the new pillows, the new sofas… they’re too soft for a soldier, let alone a man from his time, designed to take his hard edges and whittle them down til he’s too comfortable. 

Steve’s barefoot, in a white t-shirt and jeans, his cheeks flushed. The radio’s on, he’s picked some old station, ‘They Can’t Take That Away From Me’ is playing, and Steve’s humming along. It’s a picture of domestic bliss, like he’s just stepped back in time to their old apartment, half the size of this one, where they didn’t have a coffee machine (his one luxury now), or a radio, just bedbugs, and the background noise of Steve’s wheezing as Bucky rubbed liniment on his back for him after he’d got in another fight.

Steve must be similarly affected. ‘This is a nice place.’ His smile is wistful.

‘It’s not nice, Steve,’ Bucky looks rueful, gesturing at the busted old sofa, the chairs he’s foraged from Craigslist ads and from people leaving them outside on the curb. He’s sanded and polished them, oiled them, but it’s not anything like what Steve will be used to with his 18 million twitter followers and his endorsement deals for protein shakes, and weights, and socks, even. 

‘I hate my apartment,’ Steve tells him, as if he can read his mind. Maybe he can, Bucky reflects, sourly, it always was supposed to be one of those mythical things about alphas and omegas. Or maybe it’s just that Steve has known him for so long. ‘I hate how clean it is, how big it is, how much it echoes. They have people there who watch me, too. No bugs inside that I can see any longer, but my neighbours know my comings and goings, report back.’

‘And you’re so sure no one followed you here? That those people you have watching me don’t answer to some higher power?’ He reaches out for a pancake and Steve raps him on the knuckles sharply, with a spatula. 

‘No one followed me. I’ve established a pattern. I come here once a month and I revisit my old haunts, lay flowers on ma’s grave, volunteer with the veterans. I’ve been doing it for a year now.’

‘And I’ve never seen you?’

‘I’ve never seen you, either. I didn’t know you were here until two weeks ago. I just had to wait until the next time I visited. Grow my beard in-’

‘It’s horrible.’

‘- and do the same as I always do. Visit the veterans, lay flowers on ma’s grave, walk my old neighbourhoods and stop by a nostalgic 1940s bar. No one’s going to bat an eyelid. I’ll go back tonight.’

‘Tonight?’ Bucky tries to sound casual but doesn’t think he’s quite managed it.

‘I’ve got a hotel booked as back-up. I didn’t know how this was going to go.’

‘Do you have to stay in the hotel?’ Bucky busies himself clearing the kitchen table, setting it with his mismatched cutlery. Too nervous to make eye-contact.

‘You want me to stay here?’ There’s so much in that question. Steve has asked it a million times – since they were boys, through war, out the other side.

‘I don’t know what’s safer. You might get caught leaving or-’

Steve’s expression is sceptical. He turns to flip the pancakes, makes it less embarrassing for Bucky to swallow his pride and admit it.

‘I want you to stay here.’

‘You only have to ask, pal, you know that.’

‘I know.’

It was never sexual between them. Not entirely. Not really. Of course queer theorists have written about it, there used to be modules taught on it at colleges though most of those have died out now Cap isn’t a historical figure any longer. Now he might have a say in things. 

Bucky wanted Steve his whole adult life, probably before then too. Marvelled at his self-righteousness, his ability to start fights but never end them, how small and scrappy he was, how terrible his survival instincts were. Steve was sick a lot. The exhibits always say that, but they take the sting out of it, gloss over it a little. The Steve he grew up with was asthmatic, sure, and had astigmatism – maybe explained why he picked so many fights with bigger guys, he was half-blind to their size. But he’d nearly died of scarlet fever, he had angina, and arrhythmia, and anaemia, and he used to have to drink liver extract every day. Used to sit over a bowl trying not to vomit it up while Bucky rubbed soothing figures of eight all over his back.

Bucky’s love for Steve was as natural as breathing. It started in protectiveness, then admiration, then friendship, desire: his blue eyes, his soft mouth, the fierce set of his shoulders when he wanted something.

He wanted Bucky not to run, now. Bucky knew that. Knew that he had it all figured out, how Bucky could stay here and Steve could visit him and no one would ever need know. But Steve forgot himself, forgot how Bucky had killed presidents, and protestors, and soldiers, and little children. If they ever knew that Steve had found Bucky, and that he’d not brought him in, it would ruin Steve. They’d find Bucky, they’d make him stand trial for his crimes, and they’d take away even those small parts of a life which Steve was trying to grow.

‘You gonna stand there with your mouth open catching flies, Bucky?’ Steve’s found crockery, ladled out the pancakes, poured the coffee with cream, spooned sugar after sugar into Bucky’s mug. 

‘I was just thinking about tomorrow,’ he says, pulling out his chair opposite Steve’s, drinking the rich brew, so sweet. 

‘Tomorrow’s not going to come,’ Steve says, confidently.

‘Well if anyone was gonna make a pact with god to stop time it would be you,’ Bucky hides his smile in his cup. It had taken him four months to stomach the taste of coffee. They used to give it to him black, and cold, throw it on him to wake him, rely on the caffeine to override any exhaustion he might feel. He loves it now, creamy, sugary. Orders Pumpkin Spice lattes in Starbucks even though he doesn’t look the type.

‘I can’t believe it’s you,’ Steve says, pouring syrup all over his pancakes. ‘I can’t believe I found you. That you remember me.’

‘I don’t remember everything,’ Bucky says. ‘I remember when we were young most of all. Then the war, in dribs and drabs. I’ve read everything I can about the Howling Commandos but not a lot of it tallies.’

Steve snorts, ‘That’s propaganda for you, Buck.’

‘I remember some of what I did when I was the Winter Soldier. I try and remember the people I killed, to honour them in some way. I travel to where I did it, leave a pebble at the scene. I know it’s stupid. As if they’d want me to honour them. Like it matters if I remember them or not.’

‘It matters,’ Steve looks so serious, those wide eyes, that noble brow. As if he could ever be anything but an all-American superhero, super-strength or not. Just from the power of his convictions alone.

They eat in silence, snatching glances at one another whenever they can. Bucky’s cheeks flush red. He feels hot again, for reasons nothing to do with his traitorous biology, just to do with Steve being here, how shy he feels. He has notebooks full of memories of bits and pieces of his life before. BEFORE the war, DURING the war, AFTER his capture, NOW. There’s other research in there too. When it hadn’t come back to him yet, when he didn’t know why he hadn’t killed his target, he pieced it together slowly. From Wikipedia articles, social media, encyclopaedias, books like The Steve Rogers Story, and Queering the Past: Steve Rogers and the Howling Commandos. 

It’s weird piecing the Steve he remembers together with the one that everyone else thinks they know – and then his Stevey in front of him, not quite his Stevey, so broad, so golden, even in a t-shirt and old jeans.

Bucky catches Steve staring at him and instead of looking away Steve keeps his gaze, smiles and smiles at him, sort of goofy with all his teeth. ‘I meant it when I said you looked good.’

‘I’m sleeping more now. Not as many nightmares. Eating better too,’ he pokes at the pancakes. ‘Well, apart from this. I’d only had protein shakes for years, pretty much. The occasional meal when I went undercover. I had to learn it all over again. Still can’t get to grips with sushi though,’ Bucky grimaces.

‘You hated fish when we were kids, you remember?’

‘Kinda.’ His memories of childhood are pretty good, but they are all crowded out by Steve. Steve fighting. Bloody nose, skinned knees, Bucky roughhousing with him but gently, oh so gently.

‘You took care of me,’ Steve says, simply. As if it was as uncomplicated as all that.

‘No, you took care of me,’ Bucky insists. ‘You remember? My first heat, sick with it, thought it was scarlet fever, thought I was gonna die.’

Steve had smelled it on him right away. Scrappy little alpha Steve, whose body couldn’t fulfil the promises his scent made. 

Steve hadn’t stayed away when Bucky got sick, when no one in his family knew what to do with him, even the doctor baffled by his symptoms. Steve had barged his way in to his sickroom, taken one look at his body, sweat covering him, Bucky moaning and writhing, the sheets sticky and wet, and his irises had gone black suddenly, eyes all pupil. Bucky had gone still then, the smells of Steve suddenly taking on a new connotation. Steve must have known, had been born an alpha, had been scrapping since he was a kid, had had so many serious conversations with Bucky about what it meant, and how he felt, and how people smelled, and whether it made his heart problems worse, if a girl would ever want to be with him… But Steve left the room, told Bucky to put a chair against the door, to not let anyone in but him, and when he’d come back he’d had a bottle of whiskey and a handful of pills, had handed them over gingerly, barely touching Bucky’s skin, and told him to wash them down, that that was what he had to do, it would make him feel better. And when Bucky woke up the next morning, skin aching but cool, he’d sat there and told him he was an omega. That he was in heat. That he needed to find a doctor who could help him. And that nothing would ever change the way Steve felt about him. And Bucky believed him, because Steve’s lies were always sweeter than anyone else’s, and the way he said them, the way he looked, well. It was easy to be convinced, after a while.

***

They talk for hours, of times that they both remember, and of things even Steve has forgotten. It gets dark outside, and Bucky’s the first to break, ‘Shall we… the… Do you want to…’

‘Shall we go to bed?’ Steve says, ever the braver of them, even if he’d deny it over and over.

They undress in silence, a dance they have done many times before. Steve shyly looking at Bucky’s body then swerving his eyes away once he’s noticed one too many of his scars. That is new. Steve had never willingly looked away from Bucky’s body before, had always seemed greedy for it in a way Bucky couldn’t let him have. Steve was too sick for sex, back then: the angina, high blood pressure, the heart problems. Even when they shared an apartment Bucky was terrified the whole time that his scent would do something to set Steve off, or that Steve would do something to set him off, and then Steve would die, because of Bucky, and what he was. And then, during the war, Bucky had no desire for anything. Steve’s body was god-like, marble, like a statue, but Bucky was so scared of anyone knowing that he took pill after pill, black-market, anywhere he could get them, until he never felt anything except love, except the traitorous skip of his heart when Steve talked about Peggy, the twist in his stomach when Steve saved him, again. 

Steve gets on the bed first, in singlet and boxers, and Bucky lies behind him, in the position they had honoured for so many years, when Steve was small, and when Bucky was too scared to put himself in a vulnerable position. They are the same height now, Bucky realises, as he gingerly wriggles down the bed, until he can press his face into the nape of Steve’s neck, inhale him, taste him on the air.

‘Do they know what you are?’ Bucky asks, curious. He wonders how anyone can not. Alphas are extremely rare now, but how could you see Steve’s stubborn mouth, the way he wears authority, and not know what he is.

‘Yeah, I guess, they put me on suppressants. But I’m hardly the archetypical alpha am I.’

Bucky snorts, ‘Yeah just constantly getting into fights, bossing people around even when you were tiny, always thinking you were right.’ Bucky can’t see Steve’s face but he knows he’s smiling.

‘No, you remember those posters when we were kids. ‘Ladies, be aware – could an alpha be over there?’ Blonde women, and men in the doorway, arms raised, canines showing, about to burst through the door and ravish them.’

‘You’ve never shown your canines,’ Bucky says.

‘No because it’s not a thing, Buck, I’m not a vampire.’ Now Bucky can feel him laughing. ‘I’ve also never roamed around in packs with other men, picking fights.’

‘I hate to break it to you,’ Bucky mutters, settling his arms round Steve’s stomach, holding him tight like a barrier to the world. ‘But what do you think the Avengers is, exactly?’

Steve properly laughs then, wriggles around until he’s nose to nose with Bucky, presses his forehead against his, meets his gaze with such earnest emotion that Bucky has to close his eyes.

‘I always knew I’d find you,’ he murmurs it low, like a secret meant just for Bucky. ‘I’ll always find you.’

Bucky rubs his face over Steve’s, kisses the patch by the side of his eyes where the skin is thinner, strokes his cheekbones, his chin, his jaw, his neck. Licks a promise into the part where Steve’s neck meets his shoulder, sucking it into his mouth, knowing he’s going to leave a mark but unable to help himself. Thrills at the idea of Steve going back to work, to Tony Stark, to the rest of them, and feeling the throb of the possession Bucky’s clever mouth has sucked into his skin, underneath his clothes, with him all the time.

‘You remember how we used to do this?’ Steve asks, as if he’s concerned suddenly, taking advantage of an amnesiac.

‘Of course I remember,’ Bucky says, pulling back. They’d never progressed beyond this sort of necking, this inhaling of one another they used to do at bedtime like a ritual. The first time it happened was before Steve knew what Bucky was, though maybe he always knew somewhere, deep down. It had been cold outside, and that had been their excuse for it. The windows rattled with the wind. The chill got in everyone’s bones, not least Steve’s, and ‘it could be fatal if it gets on your chest,’ Bucky had said, like he had said so many times before. He knew it was an excuse even before he said it. 

When they lived together it happened pretty much all the time, unless Bucky went out with some girl, or dragged Steve out with him on a double-date that Steve never asked for. Handsome, muscular, omega Bucky, who wanted to be claimed but hated himself for wanting it, made himself sick over it, disgusted by his slickness when the pills didn’t work, the way his hands would scrabble for Steve in bed even while he knew it was wrong.

‘I knew you’d remember me. You saved me. When all of Sergeant Barnes’s archive was stolen from the Smithsonian I knew I’d get you back.’ Steve punctuates his sentences with caresses of Bucky’s face, strokes his thumb down Bucky’s cheekbone, rests the pad of it on Bucky’s lower lip.

‘You always were a cocky little jackass,’ Bucky says, bites Steve’s thumb, gently, gently. He wants to have sex with Steve. He wants to touch him all over. He wants to have one night with him before he leaves again. 

He leans in to Steve, cradles his jaw, and they kiss. Bucky hasn’t kissed anyone since 1945. Hasn’t kissed anyone since Steve. But his body remembers it: how to sigh into Steve’s mouth, to shift closer, to slide his leg between Steve’s so their bodies are tangled together.

‘You always made me crazy,’ Steve says. ‘You still do.’ He leans back in, sucks Bucky’s lower lip, softly.

Bucky wanted to have sex with Steve even before he really knew what that meant. And then after he knew what he was he spent so long poring over magazines and books for stories of omegas, wondering what it meant, what it meant for his body. He read everything. Girls writing into problem pages saying they were worried that their boyfriend would leave them because he was an alpha, and they weren’t omega, and they didn’t know what to do. Or they were omega, and they did know what to do, and they wanted, oh they wanted, and they were scared of how they felt, of how their biology overtook everything else, until they were mindless with it. And Bucky knew what that felt like. How slick he’d get when Steve was unexpectedly dominant, a sudden rough edge to his voice that would then dissipate into a fit of coughing and Bucky would feel curiously sad and relieved, all at the same time. 

They kiss until Bucky’s lips are sore, until his chin and cheeks are abraded by Steve’s beard, but he doesn’t care. The radio is still on, he can hear Count Basie, and it’s like falling through time, like he and Steve are eternal, even though he knows how little time they really have. Just one night. He can let himself have just one night. 

‘You know we’re supposed to be together,’ Steve mutters into Bucky’s neck, bending his head to kiss the skin where Bucky’s arm joins his body. ‘No matter what they did to you-’

‘No matter what I did?’ Bucky interrupts, flinching slightly at the feeling of someone being tender to his body, after all these years. 

‘None of it matters,’ Steve persists. 

Bucky bets he imagines them in a house with a white picket fence, Steve going to work – saving the world – while Bucky stays at home, grows fat with babies, sticky fingers on Steve’s uniform when he gets home, picks them up, swings them round and. Bucky blinks. No. Maybe he imagines them side by side, brothers in arms again, fighting beneath the American flag, fighting for what’s right. But Bucky doesn’t give a damn about America any more, knows that even with the most hope in the world Steve must know that a super-soldier with a metal arm turns up, people are going to have some questions about who he is. Questions that will end in a reinforced cell.

‘Imagine if I believed you, Steve Rogers,’ there’s no malice in Bucky’s tone. ‘Imagine if I believed that everything was gonna be alright, that Captain America could fix it all, I’d probably sleep easier than I have in years.’

His alarm bleeps then, and he disentangles himself. 

‘It’s midnight, Buck, where are you going?’ Steve props himself up on his arm, watches Bucky walk out of the room. 

‘I’m only wearing boxers, I’m not going far,’ Bucky says. He fills his water glass, returns, sits cross legged on the bed. He shakes the pills.

‘That’s how I found you,’ Steve says.

Bucky stills in the act of unscrewing the cap. 

‘I have google alerts set up. There was a reddit thread about omega pills, some kid said he was selling them in Brooklyn, he wanted advice on how to make them.’

Jimmy’s brother. ‘He mentioned a man?’

‘No, nothing like that. No gender. But I thought it was worth checking out, and I… I saw you through the window when I walked past.’

After all those years of running, he’d seen him walking past. Bucky was an idiot. An idiot who’d dropped his guard. Not for much longer.

He downs the pills, wipes his mouth, and lies back down next to Steve. He slides his hands up Steve’s vest until Steve gets the message, takes it off and lies back down, pulls Bucky hard against him in a way which makes Bucky just want to fall to his knees in front of Steve. Swoon like he’s on the front cover of a Harlequin romance.

Steve’s hands slide down to the base of Bucky’s spine, linger there, a hot weight, just above the swell of his ridiculously round ass. Bucky feels hot and cold, this line one they have walked countless times.

‘I don’t have sex on the first date,’ Bucky says against Steve’s gasping mouth.

‘This is the first date now, is it?’

‘It’s the first time I’ve seen you like this in seventy years, I think it counts as a first date.’

Steve doesn’t stop the gentle swirl of his fingers on Bucky’s skin. Bucky can still feel his heat thrumming through his blood, like all the pills in the world can’t dampen the smell and feel of Steve. Like all it will take is for Steve to touch him there and he’ll catch fire.

All Bucky has wanted, deep down, is to let Steve take him, to mate him, to make Bucky his. But he never let himself before, and he can’t let himself now. Steve has no idea what he’ll lose if he stays with Bucky. It won’t take long for him to be linked to the Winter Soldier name, for Bucky to live out his unnaturally long life in a prison cell, watching Steve tie himself in knots trying to get him out, or break him out. Or worse, Steve will be taken down with him, that pig-headed logic of his telling him it’s better for Steve to be tried with Bucky than leave him to his fate. Bucky always had to be the level-headed of the two of them. The patient one to Steve’s hot-headed, fight-starting ways. If he stays here, someone will find out, someone will follow Steve, see where he’s going, and then everything will be over. He can’t do that to him. 

He’s trying to be level-headed now, as they kiss, and kiss, and he moans into Steve’s mouth, runs his hands all over him so he can try and impress this on his memory.

They eventually fall asleep, entwined entirely. Chest to chest, face to face: Steve’s chin on Bucky’s shoulder, his leg slung casually over his hip. 

Steve sleeps peacefully, and Bucky counts his breaths like he used to do for so many years. Listens to the comforting, slow, steady sounds of Steve’s heart beating. Reminds him of those times when he’d almost will it to beat, hold his breath when it stuttered, cradle Steve’s body against his all the while. 

Bucky extricates himself, careful not to wake Steve. He takes his stash of passports, his documentation, his notebooks, his pills. He kisses Steve on his obstinate mouth, relaxed in sleep.

He writes a note. ‘I’m sorry. I love you. Please don’t find me.’ It’s utterly inadequate, but how can he finds words to say how he feels. Like his heart is full and empty all at once. 

He closes the door quietly. And, like that, he’s a ghost once more.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Boys weren’t omegas. Not outside of blue movies, or bluer songs, at least, the kind of anecdotes too ribald even for soldiers to tell. Girls were omegas, sometimes, but rarely, even in those days. Dying breeds, he guessed. When he was the asset it had stopped entirely, he had thought it all over: feels sick thinking of what they would have done to exploit him if he had suffered back then. But now, 2014, eating three meals a day, sleeping regularly in a safe bed, the old ghost has come back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Write the a/b/o fic you want to see in the world. Set after The Winter Soldier.
> 
> The title comes from Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse. I know where this is going and it's going to be an epic route to a happy ending.
> 
> Chapters are going to alternate Bucky and Steve. Steve's turn!

Steve's body registers Bucky is gone, even before Steve is fully awake. He stretches into the space where Bucky was - where Bucky should be - and feels his absence immediately. He's awake in a moment, knows that Bucky isn't showering, or on his way out for coffee, or getting more pills, even before he finds the note.

He doesn't read it, he just crumples it up, rips it in a hundred tiny pieces for good measure. There's no point reading it, he knows exactly what it will say.

He tears the apartment apart, and it doesn't take long, barely takes the edge off the fury he feels. He finds the loose floorboard and pries it up, realises that Bucky has left a cache of weapons behind. The rifle, the knives, the semi automatic. Steve realises then that Bucky plans to skip the border, is probably on his way to the airport now, is probably on a flight even as Steve wrecks the place.

It doesn't take long to check the flights heading out of JFK, to see where he might be going. Paris, Canada, London, Moscow, Dublin. There's too many to track. He doesn't have a hope of finding Bucky again. He rubs his temples, fights against giving in to despair. He knows what he's looking for now, more than he did then. Bucky's tell-tale give. His heat. His pills. 

Steve ruefully considers the destruction he has left behind him. Sighs, picks up the table, rights it. Snorts, realising how long it will take to fix what he spent ten minutes destroying. He wonders if that isn't the neatest description for so many of his life choices, pre and post serum. Maybe he shouldn't have found Bucky, should have just let him be. Maybe he was romanticising what would happen, he has a habit of that, he can admit to himself. He just saw Bucky as his business, purely his business. Even the other avengers didn't need to know where he was. They wouldn't understand the way Steve did, that Bucky remembered, that Bucky was sorry, that Bucky wouldn't hurt anyone again. They'd want to take him in, deprogram him, make Bucky a scapegoat for every assassination from JFK to MLK. They'd lock him up and throw away the key. Or, death penalty, even. Take that body, that man out of time, and finally lay him to rest.

So, no. They didn't need to know. Steve could have visited him, could have found him a safe haven where no one would ever bother them. But Bucky had to run. Sweet Bucky, whose mouth was as intoxicating as it was smart, whose body still fit Steve's better than any of his clothes. Maybe he was being foolish, but he honestly believed he could have one part of his life which didn't belong to Shield, to America, which just belonged to him. Captain America has been idealised through the ages: noble, selfless, humble, brave. Steve Rogers can be all of those things, of course, but he is also a man. 

After he's put the apartment right - in between deeply inhaling everything which contains Bucky's scent, and taking two of Bucky’s shirts - he checks one last time, for any clues for where Bucky has gone, for where he might find him. All he finds is an empty pill bottle, tucked behind aspirin in the bathroom cabinet, but he pockets it regardless, like he's got Cinderella's glass slipper and it's going to somehow lead him straight to Bucky. 

He stays long enough to fulfil the routine he developed, leaves flowers on his ma's grave, on Bucky's ma's grave too. He retraces his steps to everywhere they used to live, where he used to get beat up, where Bucky would go out dancing, where they had their first kiss, their first job. It's a silent way of saying goodbye. He doesn’t want to have to see these old haunts again, not without Bucky with him, pointing out the memories associated with each spot. The good memories only.

Steve plans to lie to Natasha, to Sam, when he gets back, plans to pretend he did what he always did, just went to Brooklyn, walked the old neighbourhoods and tried to be anonymous for once.

But it’s hard when he gets home, when he lets himself into his apartment, when Sam texts him ‘How was New York?’ with three emojis afterwards that Steve doesn’t understand but thinks are supposed to be to do with baseball and hot dogs and sunshine. He runs into Sharon in the hall when he’s on his way out to the gym. He takes his headphones out so they can exchange pleasantries.

‘Out for a run?’ she gestures to his workout clothes. His t-shirt is one of Bucky’s, that he took from the apartment. It says ‘I woke up like this’ and even given the morning he had it was enough to startle a laugh out of him.

‘Yeah, got to keep fit, you know.’ What else would he be doing in Nikes and shorts and this ridiculous top. Going to the opera. Jeez.

‘About that coffee we talked about before-’

‘Before I found out you worked for S.H.I.E.L.D.?’ he asks, in his most non-confrontational voice. The voice which Bucky learned fast spelled trouble.

‘Yeah, before that.’ She tilts her chin up, meeting his gaze coolly. ‘Before I played a crucial role in savings thousands of lives.’

He snickers under his breath. ‘Fair comment.’

‘I’ll take it as a no, then?’ She shrugs, a sort of ‘no hard feelings’ gesture that makes him feel guilty for all of thirty seconds before he remembers that she was planted there to watch him, that she probably still watches him, that she might well be on her way into her apartment right now to send a report on what he’s doing, what he’s wearing. Where he’s been.

‘No, let’s go for coffee. I could do with another friend.’ His tone is deliberately bland, matching hers. She’s not going to be a friend. But maybe she’ll throw them all off what he’s really up to. ‘I like the art they do on the top of the lattes. Think they could do me a shield?’

‘Sure, they might not be good at spelling your name, but they can probably recreate a perfect Cap likeness in that foam. You might even get your own namesake coffee.’  
‘I’d like that. Something really sugary.’ His smile is his most perfect one. Rueful, modest, aw-shucks, I’m-just-a-regular-guy. He drops it as soon as she turns away, puts her key in the door. Hikes his bag onto his shoulder and goes to find a way out of his head.

He’s on the treadmill, running, not even breaking a sweat, when he sees a hand – small, nails short and stubby – reach over and select ‘cool off’. He huffs out a laugh, adjusts his pace with the machine until it comes to a stop, and turns to look at Natasha.

‘I like your t-shirt,’ she says.

‘Thank you. I like your-’ He pauses, looks her up and down. ‘Neckline.’

This startles a laugh out of her, and she looks down. ‘It’s not subtle, is it?’ Her vest top is extremely low cut, and she does a small shimmy for him. He won’t break eye contact with her and she gives up eventually. ‘You’re the world’s oldest boy scout. I didn’t know you could even see boobs. Like maybe you’re colour-blind to them.’

‘I can certainly see yours today, Natasha.’ His smile is his real one, sort of toothy, a smile which matched the old Steve but doesn’t suit the new one so well. ‘How was Prague?’

She rolls her eyes. ‘You know how Prague was.’

‘And I know this isn’t your regular gym. Why are you here?’

‘I’ve got some questions for you,’ she says, and it’s said in her most deadly tone of voice. ‘Some questions about why we were in Prague and why you weren’t there, and why you made us go there. And why you have a stupid beard. And a lovebite on your shoulder.’

Steve considers lying for a brief moment, and Natasha just stands there, obviously waiting it out until. ‘Fine.’

‘Fine?’

‘I’ll tell you.’

‘I thought I was going to have more of a fight. Is it the boobs? Do they make you uncomfortable?’

‘You’re very funny,’ he says, in a tone which says anything but.

‘I know, it’s one of my more underrated qualities. Shall we go somewhere more private?’

‘Sharon’s still watching my apartment,’ he says. ‘It might be bugged.’  
‘It’s not bugged.’ She crinkles her brow. ‘I think it’s not bugged, anyway.’

‘You don’t know everything, Natasha, you just act like you do, remember.’

‘Fine, let’s go to a hotel.’

He raises an eyebrow.

‘Maybe you’ve given in to your lust for my body after all these years. Keep ‘em guessing, Rogers. Better they think I gave you that lovebite.’

He flushes, tugs his T-shirt straight.

‘It’s a good shirt,’ her eyes are considering. ‘It’s not your shirt.’

‘It could be my shirt.’

‘You wouldn’t get the joke,’ she shrugs. ‘Shower, change, meet me at the Hilton.’

‘Pricey.’

‘You like to treat me nicely,’ she’s cool as ever. ‘You hope I might put out.’

‘You’re a pill, you know that.’ His tone is fond, despite himself.

He’s planning how he’s going to explain to her why he did it, how he did it. Something about 'being frozen for years and not having any choice in the matter' and 'losing everyone I loved' and 'I am not a superhero I am a man'. Steve almost wants to do the speech unbidden but contents himself with reciting it in the bathroom as he showers, working himself up for a debate which he knows might well not even occur. Natasha isn’t an idiot, she’s supported his crusade to find Bucky from the start. He doesn’t really know why. Natasha probably has her own reasons, but then, she always does: they have an Entente Cordiale of deliberate avoidance of certain topics. She disappeared for two months after she testified and then reappeared as suddenly as she went. He doesn’t know exactly when he decided he shouldn’t tell her his suspicions about where Bucky was, maybe that it was tied up with Bucky being an omega, a secret that was never his to share.

He watches the water go down the drain, thinks about how he’s washing Bucky away, and that’s enough to make him start crying, gulping under the spray, hoping no one can hear.

*** 

Natasha is waiting in reception when he gets there, she brushes past him without an acknowledgement and he feels a key-card in his pocket. Sam’s in the room when he makes it to the third floor, lying on one of the double beds, arms pillowed behind his head, the picture of relaxation belied by the way his jaw is clenched.

‘Is this an ambush?’ Steve says. ‘Is Fury going to pop out from the wardrobe any minute now? Maybe Tony’s going to join us on speakerphone?’

‘Shut up, Steve,’ Sam pushes himself up, sits on the edge of the bed, glares at him. ‘Prague was a shitshow.’

‘I heard from Natasha,’ Steve uses his most guileless face but already knows it’s not going to wash when Natasha lets herself into the room.

‘I know you were with Bucky,’ Natasha says, before Steve even has a chance to defend himself.

‘ _We_ know you were with Bucky,’ Sam corrects her.

‘And how do you know that?’ Steve tries to buy some time.

‘You sent us to Prague on a wild goosechase,’ Natasha says, leaning back against the door as if to intimate that there’s no escape for Steve.

‘I had valid intel that-’

‘Can it, Rogers. There was no intel other than you wanting us on the other side of the world while you tried to take Bucky in by yourself.’ She’s absolutely implacable and it drives Steve wild, makes him want to shake her.

‘I would never bring him in, and if you think I would, I should never have trusted you to help in the first place.’

‘You obviously trusted us enough to spin us a load of lies, Steve,’ the censure in Sam’s voice is painful and Steve winces, pulls out the chair by the hotel room desk and slumps down in it, rests his head on his forearm.

‘I didn’t know he was there for sure. I just heard a rumour he was in Brooklyn.’

‘Which is why you’ve been going there for months,’ Sam doesn’t ask so much as state it as a fact.

‘Which is why I’ve been going there for months,’ Steve reluctantly mutters. 

‘And you found him this time?’

‘I found him this time,’ he says, dully.

‘And what happened?’ Natasha asks. He chances a look up at her, expecting her to look angry but she just looks sad.

‘We talked. I spent the night. I woke up and he was gone.’

She nods as if it confirms everything she thought, even though those three short sentences can in no way possibly convey everything which happened between Steve and Bucky, as if she can ever understand what it is between them.

‘I’m sorry, man,’ Sam says. Reluctantly sympathetic, though that shouldn’t surprise Steve given their friendship.

Sam believes in Captain America, but he believes in Steve too, understands the pain that comes from adjusting to the world after war and obviously tries to extrapolate that to what Steve must be experiencing. 'When I think about it I get vertigo,' Sam had told him once, over a slice of cheap and greasy takeaway pizza that Steve finds easier to stomach than any organic bread or quinoa. 'Forget how soft the bed feels, that I'm always pretending I'm the same guy I was before... You? You are in the wrong century. Every fucking thing makes no sense to you.' His eyes had got wet then, he had covered Steve's hand with his own, 'Of course we have to find Bucky.'

‘I feel like I’ve lost him all over again,’ Steve says, finally, when the silence grows long between them. ‘He’d built some kind of life there, he had a job, an identity. And he’s lost it all because of me. I think he’s left the country. I don’t know if I will find him again.’ He knows he won’t give up though, because trying to find Bucky is more invigorating than beating the crap out of his punchbag or watching Peggy remember and forget him in the same thirty minute visit. 

It had been Natasha who had found the first hint of Bucky, months ago now. ‘He's been to the exhibit at the Smithsonian,' she had said, striding into his apartment one morning without bothering to knock. Or ask. Or presumably use a key. Steve was on the couch and Sam on the floor, after a fruitless argument about hospitality and Sam's refusal to take Steve's bed from him. 'You're Captain America, I can't steal your comforter.'

'You're serious?' Steve had asked her, immediately upright and ready to go, all jutting jaw and steely gaze.

'Yes, obviously,' she had rolled her eyes in a particularly Natasha-ish way. 'He's on the CCTV footage wandering around for hours, keeps coming back to the bit about you being childhood friends, him dying in action. And it looks like someone broke into their archives, took everything related to Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, and got out without anything noticing. Well, he took everything related to Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes that was left in their archives at least.' She had quirked an eyebrow and Steve could feel the flush travelling up to his hairline. 'Looks like they'd had an earlier unreported break-in relating to the Buchanan exhibits: apparently pretty much everything not on display had already gone.' Neither Sam nor Natasha had teased him about it then, and he had wondered how much they suspected of how he felt about Bucky. Presumed now that they had guessed at least that their relationship transcended time, transcended friendship.

‘You’re more likely to find him again if you let us help,’ Natasha’s gaze is as intent as it always is. ‘I don’t want to go to Prague again. I don’t like it there. Memories.’ She makes a brief moue of distaste but doesn’t explain herself further. He doesn’t ask. 

‘You know I’m an alpha,’ Steve finds the crack on the ceiling very interesting suddenly, studiously avoiding eye contact. ‘Actually I don’t know if either of you know, I don’t know how much of this stuff they put in my files, how much of it ever came out.’

‘I didn’t know they still had alphas, nowadays. Huh.’ Natasha’s voice is as cool as ever, so Steve persists.

‘Bucky knows, and Bucky is… similarly afflicted. I found him because I had an alert about illegal suppressants on, and there was some kid on reddit, talking about making them, and he was in Brooklyn and I had a hunch.’ The ceiling crack is still fascinating to him. It stretches right the way to the curtains. Huh.

‘And you didn’t tell us because..?’ 

‘I don’t know, because my medical history should be none of anyone’s fucking business and I’d quite like to keep something private?’ He surprises himself at the profanity. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to swear.’

Natasha looks embarrassed, ‘No, I’m sorry. You’re right, it shouldn’t be anyone’s fucking business. But we’re supposed to be a team.’

Sam has been quiet for too long. Steve chances a look at him. He looks baffled. ‘Man, I don’t even know what an alpha is. If you’re just saying you have a Type A personality this feels like a dramatic way to do it.’

Natasha is the one to start laughing first, properly laughing, head thrown back. Steve joins in, finally, and Sam even starts chuckling, even though he obviously has no idea why it’s hilarious to them.

‘You really have no clue?’ Steve doesn’t think it’s as funny as his laughter indicates, it’s just like some hysteria has bubbled up and he can’t quash it.

‘Alphas and omegas?’ Natasha is incredulous as Sam shakes his head slowly. ‘What do they teach in American schools these days.’

‘Alphas are one in 200,000 nowadays, Natasha.’

‘That’s not what porn would have me believe,’ she winks.

Steve snorts despite himself. ‘This is pretty mortifying for me, Sam, I don’t quite know how to explain it.’

‘I can’t watch you do this, Steve,’ Natasha has her hand over her face. ‘This will be like watching your grandpa give a sex ed class.’  
‘It’s a biological thing,’ Steve goes for the scientific way out. ‘It used to be incredibly common. Alphas and omegas can be either gender, and we can smell each other. We go into heat. We mate. We, well.’ He steels himself, takes a deep breath. ‘We’re physiologically different. We knot when we have sex with omegas, sometimes.’ Steve never has. His knot is one of the reasons he never lets anything sexual go much beyond kissing, keeps his hands to himself in the hopes his partner will too.

Sam’s face says ‘ew’ more eloquently than words ever could. Steve ploughs on, his face redder than he knew a face could turn. ‘The condition has mostly died out now, no one knows why, omegas are supposed to no longer exist, or in such small numbers no one can track it. They put me on suppressants when I was young, and S.H.I.E.L.D. does it now. I’ve not been in heat as long as I can remember. They barely make the suppressants any longer. Only a handful of people know what I am.’

‘So if you’re alpha, and there are omegas, what does that make the rest of us?’

‘Beta,’ Steve explains.

‘You sound like a men’s rights activist,’ Natasha’s tone is dry. 

‘You don’t smell like alpha, or omegas. We can’t scent you. You don’t have heats. And you don’t respond to any of the alpha… stuff we do.’

‘Like what? What alpha stuff?’

‘Tone of voice, posture. I was so small when I was a kid, but I got in so many fights before my biology gave me some clue as to why.’ He’d scrapped constantly. And after he’d hit puberty it had made more sense. Although the only person who ever responded to his ‘alpha crap’, as Bucky had termed it, was Bucky himself. He’d show his neck to Steve, then flush, slam out of the apartment. On one memorable occasion he’d let Steve suck a whole necklace of throbbing bruises into his skin, before telling Steve he was a dead man if he ever tried it again. It was… confusing, though Steve was old enough and big enough now to know no one had been more confused than Bucky probably was.

‘And you don’t want people to know what Bucky is? That’s why you lied?’

 _I’m still lying_ , Steve thinks, but he just says, ‘Yes. It’s not like it was before, of course, when there was so much prejudice on both sides against alphas and omegas. Omegas were supposed to be incredibly submissive, weak, when on heat they would have sex with anyone who happened upon them. Alphas were aggressive predators. Great in the boardroom, great in battle, but unfaithful, lecherous, violent. If people knew what Bucky was… I can’t imagine it would make his situation any easier. And it’s not my secret to tell.’

‘It’s a lot to take in,’ Sam shakes his head slowly. ‘But hey,’ he brightens, ‘it’s not much weirder than alien technology and Thor and all that shit. I’ll get used to it.’

There’s a knock on the door then and Steve startles, comes to his feet immediately in the kind of fluid movement that Natasha always deems ‘creepily inhuman’. 

‘It’s just room service, I ordered pizza.’ Sam pulls a fistful of dollars from his wallet, checks the peephole first, and lets the guy in. He’s got one of those professionally bland faces, concentrates on his trolley full of pizza and diet coke rather than on the moment he’s interrupted. He doesn’t look twice at Steve – maybe the beard does work – and just sets the plates down, pulls off the covers with a flourish, and accepts his tip with a smile. 

Sam hands Steve a diet coke, clinks their cans together, ‘To getting the band back together. We’re going to find him again. And we’re going to figure out a way for him to be safe.’

‘You’re so hopeful,’ Natasha peels off a slice of pepperoni pizza, painstakingly removes all the onion. ‘I’m the realistic one. We’ll try and find him. We’re going to try to figure out a way for him to be safe. _Try_ being the key word here.’

‘Trying’s better than nothing,’ Steve bites into the pizza, remembers his last meal yesterday, the pancakes, the silences, the feel of Bucky buzzing on the edges of his awareness, sparking off little bursts of excitement whenever he thought about it. Even as he ate with him, had he known it would be the only meal they would share? Would that have somehow imbued it with more purpose, more meaning? 

'If you think suppressants are key, let's create a list of possible destinations, places where Hydra are rumoured to have strongholds, cross check against places he could feasibly get treated? Geographical prevalence of the condition,' Natasha is so efficient she can inhale a whole slice of pizza while creating a master plan. 

‘And we cover this research how, exactly? You know they watch everything I do.’

Natasha looks thoughtful, or as thoughtful as someone can look when they’re inhaling greasy pizza. ‘Tell them your suppressants aren’t working.’

‘What?’ Steve’s pizza is halfway to his mouth when she says this and he stops, frozen. He hates talking about anything to do with his heats, hates any sort of implication that being alpha has any impact on his life, on who he is.

‘Steve, think about it,’ Sam warms to the topic, surprising considering he’d never even heard the term an hour ago. ‘Tell them you need to see a specialist. They’ll get you a list, and there’s our cover. Gives us a reason to travel there too. And they’ll want it hushed up, they’ll want you as incognito as possible, in case anyone gets any word about it. It’s perfect.’

Steve is still surprised that no gossip magazine has ever run a piece about him being an alpha. Before the war people knew, but the prejudice against alphas was such that had anyone outside of the small group of scientists known, there was no way he would have been given the serum. Peggy had been aware, but she hadn’t cared, had seen who he really was the day she met him, had held him to those standards right the way through their friendship, as brief as it had actually been. Though, she is the only other person alive – apart from Bucky – who remembers him from before he was Captain America.

Steve had known it was the right thing to do to leak all the Hydra intel, but had lived through the news reports with clenched fists, terrified that someone had known what he was, that it was somewhere in one of those files. But, nowadays there isn’t the same prejudice as there was. Largely because the condition is so rare, he supposes, cynically. He’d probably be mocked as an oddity, and his sex-life would probably be aggressively raked over, but it wouldn’t have the same connotations it once had. All those connotations Bucky was so scared about, using Steve’s illness as an excuse to never give in to what they both wanted.

‘This means I have to talk to people about what I really am,’ Steve looks thoughtful, feels his pulse starting to pick up and his palms itch, dampens down the sensation of rising panic. 

‘They already know, Steve,’ Natasha is ever reasonable. ‘We might as well use it to our advantage.’

It feels like giving away another part of himself, but then he thinks of Bucky, thinks of their night together last night, Bucky pressed around him, kissing and touching and talking. He imagines a world in which he could have this again. Maybe Bucky’s right, maybe he is just an idealistic fool, but if Natasha – cynical, kind, Natasha – thinks it can happen, maybe he has to trust in that.

*** 

Steve hasn’t ever had a heat. Not a real one, anyway. There’s always been something about Bucky’s smell, on his sheets, on his clothes, which has lit something inside Steve, but he’s never had that mindless rush where you want to pull your skin off, rut helplessly against anyone nearby. Consent has always been so important to Steve, and the idea of heats has always deeply troubled him. Because, if Bucky is just driven by his body’s desire to couple, does that mean he really wants Steve at all? Though, Steve and Bucky had wanted each other far before either of them knew what alpha and omega meant. Even on suppressants, which were marketed as ‘Turning you normal!’ Steve would still sigh over the curl of Bucky’s hair on his cheek before he put Brylcreem in, the strength of his shoulders, the feel of his thighs bracketing Steve’s body when they kissed at bedtime. Still, he’s concerned about how he’s going to persuade his doctors that his suppressants aren’t working, not without coming off them entirely, and he’s faintly terrified about how that might go.

Will he change like they say? All sharp teeth, snapping at everyone who crosses his path, desperately looking for some omega to claim. What if it makes him an asshole. It’s funny because they used to talk about this when they were kids, him and Bucky, all the time. Most alphas didn’t go on suppressants in the old days, when it was seen as a good thing to be dominant and domineering and aggressive. But Bucky, conscientious, academic Bucky, had done his research. He had never believed that Steve’s body, as weak as it was, could have handled the heat, could have handled the exhaustion, the fever, all of that crap. So Steve had persuaded his doctor that he needed pills. The doctor had told him, then, that none of them knew what the side effects were, or what the side effects might be. Not that doctors cared much for side effects in those days: Steve remembers the old Lucky Strike slogan for pregnant women, ‘reach for a lucky instead of a sweet!’. 

Maybe Steve is infertile now, he wonders, or incapable of having sex. He’s probably the world’s oldest virgin, he thinks, but he’s just never wanted to risk people finding out the truth. He would have partnered with Peggy, would have made love to her, married her, had babies with her, have watched the world change slowly, not all at once, in a way that leaves him confused by even basic day-to-day interactions.

It is acceptable to swear mostly, and blaspheme, but you can’t call women ‘ladies’ a lot of the time, and sometimes it is okay to give them your seat on the subway but sometimes it isn’t, and there are just a lot more words for being gay. Not that Steve is gay, he supposes queer is the word which best fits – it is the word he’d grown up with, after all, better than all those stupid euphemisms like ‘he dances at the other end of the ballroom’. He figures his sexuality isn’t anyone’s business but his own. Since he woke up there’s been a few girls, a few kisses after nice dates where he politely sees them home, politely slides his tongue into their mouth, politely slides his hand up their shirt just to their waist – no higher – and touches circles into their skin.

And then goes home and jerks off. Because at least in private no one is going to remark about his anatomy. Or sell their story to a gossip rag.

His apartment feels too big tonight. After he’d left Natasha and Sam he’d gone for another run, but even that hadn’t helped him put his thoughts in order. Yesterday had been so bizarre, like something out of a dream, he keeps having to pick up the shirts he took from Buck’s apartment, inhale them, to prove to himself that it really happened, that he really found him, that he would find him again. 

He puts on an old record, gets out his sketchbook and draws Bucky as he was yesterday, smiling around a pancake, syrup on his cheek. Lying on his side, his metal arm draped behind his head, laughing. Half hard in boxers, his eyes hungry.

Steve’s sketchbooks are full of Bucky: dancing breakaways at the Savoy, shaving in the mirror, boxing at the gym, sleeping on his stomach, creases from the pillow pressed into his face. There’s even him as the Winter Soldier, his eyes dark, the mask covering his expressive face, that generous mouth. 

Steve’s night time routine is probably boring, but to him it’s comforting to develop a constant, something he can rely on given how changeable everything else is. He has a glass of milk. He cleans his teeth. He flosses. He takes his pill last of all – only once a month, different for alphas than omegas, well different from Bucky at least. He remembers asking Dr Erskine once if the serum would ‘cure’ him, and Dr Erskine had looked baffled: Steve’s alpha nature was not a disease to be cured, it was just part of who he was. 

Steve’s struggles with his identity aren’t as strong as Bucky’s, who has been running his whole life from who he is. Bucky who always wanted to live up to some ideal of masculinity his father had tried to create. That men are strong and big and they dance with dames, and they marry a good girl, and they fight, and they work, and they drink. Having an omega for a son would never have factored into that. If people had known… Bucky would never have been able to enlist, would probably have been kicked out by his parents, ostracized by his peers. He would only have had Steve. Which basically is how it worked out anyway, Steve thinks. 

He hesitates over his pill. Unscrews the jar, tips it into his palm, looks at it. Thinks about what Natasha and Sam said, thinks about how the doctors need to believe in what he’s doing. He tips it down the sink, eventually, runs the faucet until it’s washed away, stares hard at himself in the mirror, bares his teeth. He laughs eventually, looks away, goes to bed – wonders if he’ll recognize himself in the morning.

*** 

Steve sees the same doctor once a month. They draw blood from him, they check his vitals, they marvel at his regenerative tissue and – he knows, inwardly – feel frustrated that they are no closer to creating another serum. Because what the world needs is more superheroes, as if they don’t have enough already, and oh what a mess they make.

‘Your temperature is up today?’ Dr Yoon phrases it as a question, even though it is a statement of fact. Steve is always hot, Bucky used to love it when they were shivering abroad, completing manoeuvres somewhere icy and European. ‘Like a furnace,’ he’d sigh, happily, putting his feet between Steve’s calves, his hands tucked up under Steve’s shirt, face buried in his shoulder.

‘My temperature is always up,’ Steve says, blandly.

Dr Yoon rolls her eyes: the more time anyone spends with Steve, the more they get used to his small defiances and she has spent more time with him than most.

‘It’s up from your baseline. Do you feel okay? Any symptoms I should know about?’ She runs her hands up his throat, feels his glands, looks in his ears, at the back of his throat. ‘You feel… fine. Just hot.’

It’s four days since Steve, Natasha and Sam sat down and came up with a plan, and Steve is now four days late on his suppressants. If he is going to lie, he wants to make the lie as convincing as possible. He feels different already, can feel his body adjusting to the absence of these chemicals for the first time.

‘I think it’s my suppressants,’ Steve refuses to feel embarrassed, meets Dr Yoon’s gaze with ease. 

‘Oh,’ she sits down hard on her chair, worries at her bottom lip. ‘Why do you think that?’ she says, carefully.

Dr Yoon is the third doctor he has had since he came out of the ice, and the one he likes the most. She is remarkably unphased by the way his body operates, and had written one of her graduate papers on genetic anomalies – alphas were a footnote, but it made him think she had been chosen with more care than his previous two doctors.

‘My skin feels itchy, all over, and I’m getting angry over stupid things,’ Steve says. He raises a quelling hand, ‘and before you say I get angry a lot over stupid things, trust me when I say it’s happening a lot more than it usually does. And-’ he steels himself, because this actually is embarrassing, and far more personal than he usually shares, ‘I keep getting erections. Like I’m some horny 12-year-old.’ He knows his ears are red now. To be fair, Dr Yoon’s ears are red as well, framed against the elegant chignon which she always wears her hair in.

Dr Yoon pulls her glasses off, lets them swing on the cord around her neck, and rubs her temples. ‘How long has this been going on?’

‘A few days. Everything smells stronger, too. I can’t smell any betas, I never can, but I picked up an alpha sent yesterday on the subway, and I nearly got into a fight.’

The fight had actually been totally separate to the alpha on the subway – some jackass had taken the seat Steve had given up for a pregnant woman – but Dr Yoon doesn’t need to know that. He can almost see the synapses firing as Dr Yoon processes what he is telling her: Captain America horny and angry, picking fights, not good, PR nightmare, oh fuck, oh fuck.

‘I know my… condition… has never been an issue before, but I think we need to get this figured out before I go into heat.’ This is the equivalent of lobbing a grenade into the room. Captain America on heat! Oh she must know that the rumours about alpha heats are just rumours, but no one wants to test that hypothesis out.

‘Oh Steve, I’m so sorry, this must be very confusing,’ he doesn’t expect her hand on his wrist, the sympathy in her eyes, has presumed perhaps wrongly that she cares about him in an abstract way and mostly cares about whoever it is she reports to in S.H.I.E.L.D. and in the government. 

‘It is confusing,’ he admits. It has been confusing his whole life, but particularly since he saw Bucky again, could smell him, tugging all those latent wants out of Steve again until all he could see was protecting Bucky, marrying Bucky, starting a family with Bucky. Making a fool of himself over Bucky, as he has so many times.

‘We’ve tried other things before, right?’ she brings his files up on her computer screen. ‘Injections, that sort of thing…’ she mumbles this, mostly to herself as she flicks through the screens.

‘It’s above my levels of understanding, truth be told,’ she spins round to face him again. ‘I think we need to get you to see a specialist.’

‘I really don’t want to stop working, Dr Yoon,’ he says, earnestly. ‘I’ve got bad guys to fight.’

She smiles at that, a brief tightening of her lips. ‘You won’t be able to fight bad guys if we don’t get this fixed. Honestly, Steve, I’m a little disappointed that we don’t have protocols in place for if this happened. I don’t know why that is, and I’m culpable too.’ She sighs, touches his arm again. ‘We’ll fix this. I’m going to make some calls. I want you to stay home, no active duty, okay?’ She interrupts before he can start his next sentence, ‘I mean it. Better we’re cautious than something bad happens.’

Steve feels a little panicked at that, he hasn’t really considered the possibility that something bad could come of all of this. 

‘Not that I think something bad _will_ happen, Steve, but we don’t know enough about this to know how it will affect you. So go home. I want you to buy in ice, sugary drinks, get some electrolyte replacement sachets, you’re sweating a lot. I’ll call you as soon as I have a plan. Okay?’

‘Sure,’ Steve says, slightly undone by how kind she’s being. 

‘It’ll all be okay,’ she reassures him, but he doesn’t really believe she means that, or knows enough for it to possibly be true.

 

*** 

‘I feel like crap,’ Steve says. Natasha had called him as soon as he’d got home, had obviously been following him, or having him followed. He makes an effort to not feel violated at that, knows it’s for the greater good.

‘Was it sensible to really stop taking your pills, you couldn’t just fake it?’

‘No, she’s a doctor, I needed her to see the symptoms, to take it seriously. If I start doing anything crazy I’ll take them again, I promise.’

There’s a knock on his door then and he checks the peephole first, rolls his eyes when he realizes it’s Natasha. She crosses her eyes at the door whilst she waits for him to open it, hangs up the phone and pockets it.

‘You couldn’t just text?’ he asks.

‘I brought you stuff,’ she pulls off her backpack, unzips it. ‘A bag of ice and some coke.’

He blinks as she pushes past him to the kitchen and unpacks it. ‘I did some research on alpha heats. You’re going to sweat, a lot. And dehydrate, a lot. And, according to the porn I watched, which I found _extremely_ educational, you’re going to basically want to hump anything that moves. Well, anything _omega_ that moves, so I don’t know what will happen here, hope there aren’t any omegas in your block. I brought you lube anyway.’

‘Natasha!’ He almost yelps her name out.

‘Hey, no getting wussy on me now, we’ve committed to this. You’re gonna jerk off a lot, I thought this would make it more comfy. I bought you Kleenex too.’

‘This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening,’ he squeezes his eyes shut and hopes she’ll have gone when he opens them, but no, still there, small and strong and grinning wider than he’s ever seen before. She tosses him a can of coke and pulls out a chair. 

‘I’ve got a list of places I think he could be. Only one specialist center in the whole of the US, which is nuts. American healthcare is nuts, though, so no surprises. I guess this could be seen as vaguely gynecological and sexual so no one here wants to treat that. I think our best bet is London, England. Canada’s got a place, too, but-’

‘London makes more sense,’ Steve says, suddenly certain. ‘What do you know about it?’

‘King’s College Hospital, South East London. They have a specialist there who deals with omega and alpha heats, Dr MacGregor. He’s never gone public but reading between the lines I think he’s an omega too, he’s in his seventies, and he’s incredibly well-respected. And, wouldn’t you just know it, unconfirmed sighting of Dr List in London last month. Possible Hydra base, overseas, heat specialist center,’ she ticks the factors off on her fingers, ‘I’d say even if he’s not there, it’s as good a starting point as any.’

‘So I just need to make sure Dr Yoon refers me to King’s, then?’

‘Get nostalgic on her if necessary, make it about Agent Carter, she’ll do it in a heartbeat.’

Steve frowns, feels conflicted at using Peggy’s name like that. Although he does feel nostalgic, thinks about Falsworth’s family, wonders if they’re there, if he could see them. ‘Okay, I’ll do it. You’ve been busy,’ he looks at the papers she has, the groceries she’s brought him. 

She flushes, ‘It’s nothing.’

‘No, it’s not nothing, you’re a good friend. I don’t have many of those, and I maybe don’t say it enough, but I appreciate everything you’d do for me.’

‘Eh,’ she wrinkles her nose, shrugs. ‘What are friends for if not assisting you on insane quests to track down homicidal assassins you have a giant boner for?’

‘Yeah, well, I hope you know I’d do the same for you.’

‘It’s a pretty specific situation Steve, unlikely it’s going to come up for me. But, thanks,’ she kisses him on the cheek, squeezes his hand. ‘Call me tomorrow. And try and get some rest, you look like shit.’

‘Thanks,’ he says, drily.

He drinks the can of coke once she’s gone, strips entirely naked and lies with the air-conditioning on full blast, enjoying the cool even while it irritates his oversensitive skin. London, he thinks. Bucky. ‘I’m coming for you, Buck,’ he says it out loud in his most Captain America voice, the voice that Natasha calls his ‘most irritating voice’. He has Bucky’s t-shirt in his hands, loves how it smells of both of them, still, refuses to wash it even though Natasha has certainly noticed and wrinkled her nose. He buries his face in it, knows he’s not coming back here without him. The shield, the half-life he lives, he’ll give it all up, if it means he can get Bucky back.

He just has to convince Bucky of that, too.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Write the a/b/o fic you want to see in the world. Set after The Winter Soldier.
> 
> The title comes from Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse. I know where this is going and it's going to be an epic route to a happy ending.
> 
> Chapters are going to alternate Bucky and Steve. Bucky's turn!

London holds no memories for Bucky, which is why he’s chosen it. The Winter Soldier must have notched up a kill or two in his time in the UK, but if so, Bucky is none-the-wiser as yet. The streets feel neutral. He feels like he has disappeared.

Here he is a grad student at LSE, from Wisconsin. Kirk Turner had been a Hydra operative, _had been_ being key, as he’d been left, trussed up and handcuffed on the steps of a police station in Queens, a month before Steve showed up and changed everything. 

Bucky looks enough like Kirk that it had been an easy enough identity to take, and Kirk had never made it to LSE, so it’s a loose cover that Bucky puts on like a comfy old sweater. There had only been one sticky moment, at Gatwick, when Bucky had thought that the efficient woman at passport control had realised the photo was fake, the identity was fake, but she’d just smiled and said ‘hail Hydra’ and like that, he was through the other side, Kirk Turner, 28, studying for a masters in inequalities and social science (the irony).

Bucky - _Kirk_ \- lives in a block of flats in Elephant and Castle. It’s one of those areas where they keep trying to regenerate it, half of it is cordoned off for roadworks and luxury apartments being built, but it’s industrial, ugly, anonymous. Perfect. He lives on a council estate, has a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom and a balcony that juts over the courtyard, where the kids ignore the ‘no ball games’ signs and kick around a football every day. It suits him fine. He sits with a cup of black coffee (cheap, terrible, how he likes it) most days out there. Sits there even when it’s cold outside – it’s England, it’s cold outside every day – and watches the world pass. He feels small here, insignificant, in his concrete block on the seventh floor, where no one makes eye contact in the corridor when he passes.

He works in a coffee shop, a hipster one full of girls with pink hair and nose piercings, and boys with shaved heads and full beards. They know him as Kirk, and they laugh at his all-American name, and they invite him out for drinks and they know he’ll never go. One of the girls tries to kiss him after their shift as they’re locking up, and he tells her he has someone back home, tells her how pretty she is, when what he means is ‘you are so young’ and ‘you can have no idea the things I have seen and done’. 

His life is regimented again, and it’s easier than before. In London he has no ghosts to cross paths with, no fear that he’ll look when he crosses the road and see the place where he had his first kiss, or the jeweller which used to be a burger joint, the burger joint that used to be his boxing gym. He wakes up every morning and goes for a run, he goes to the student library and reads everything he can on the years he has missing, he works an evening shift, he goes to the gym, and he goes to sleep. And if sometimes sleep doesn’t come easy, if sometimes he lies awake thinking about Steve, then who is going to judge him? Who even needs to know?

Bucky gets his information on the Winter Soldier from crackpot online forums, which fill in the holes in his memory in odd ways. Sometimes the lies spark memories of things which really happened to him, deaths he planned, people he shot. He remembers shooting Black Widow, knows her to be Steve’s friend. He remembers some of the torture, but chooses not to examine it at length, like teasing a sore tooth with your tongue, pulling away when it hurts too much. He knows now that he broke control a lot, even after decades of torture, of wiping his brain, of leaving him frozen and suspended, starved of human touch, of human emotion. They couldn't let him work in Brooklyn, he'd disappear, go off-grid... Reappear in an old diner, wandering outside a former tenement. They'd take him in under duress and wipe him, store him on ice until they needed him to kill again. He knows now that he changed the course of wars, altered the growth of global powers. He knows that he was a weapon, an attack dog, nothing more. Now he has a chance to be more than that, to try and right some of his many wrongs.

He remembers the men who experimented on him, and he has a list of names, many of whom are crossed through with a simple pencil line. Erased. Zola. Pierce. Others, waiting their turn. List. Von Strucker. He has one name underlined: Fletcher. Keith Fletcher, one of Bucky’s medical team during that trip to Brooklyn where he finally broke control. He hates everyone for what they did to him, of course, right the way up the food-chain to the head of Hydra, but he hates Fletcher most of all. For his small cruelties. For creating a reinforced gum shield so Bucky wouldn’t bite through it when screaming. For giving him meal replacement shakes instead of allowing him real food. For never acknowledging that Bucky was a person, not just a weapon.

List has been spotted in London, and Keith Fletcher has family here. Getting on this flight was chance, but often the best decisions come about by chance. Bucky doesn’t kill any longer. But he would probably be willing to make an exception, cannot see a way that keeping these men alive does anything to improve the world. Remembers how appalled he was when he woke up properly and found out Nazi scientists were used by the Americans – understands the efficacy of it even while he feels disgusted by their pragmatism.

Maybe he’s turning into as much of an idealist as Steve.

His heats are still erratic. He has been here six weeks now and he has sought comfort in books about his condition. The books are not very comforting. Heat used to be known as madness, panic, frenzy, passion. All of the information which focuses upon omegas is dated, old, and depressing. Heat could apparently drive omegas into insanity, and they used to lock them in hospitals in the 1800s, unnerved by their powerful sex drive. It was bad for an omega to stay uncoupled, they needed an alpha to dominate them to put them in their place, to help them settle. One doctor recommended a collar, or a simple braided rope, to be worn around their neck beneath their clothes, to remind them that they were owned, which would reassure them. Suppressants had been developed in the 19th century, and some omegas would find this would stop their heats, although they suspected that in the long term this might cause infertility, and some doctors were worried about the possibility of DVT, or strokes. Bucky learns that what he is doing right now is known as ‘cycling’, as his body attempts to run a complete fertility sequence for the first time since Bucky was a kid. Bucky keeps stopping it, briefly, with pills, but the body is fighting their effects, never completely suppressing his heat any longer. He writes about it in his notebooks, another piece of himself. 

Bucky is not overly concerned about whether or not he is infertile, knows his body can heal most things which happen to it, but equally knows that he is sick of feeling hot, and horny, and not himself. Hates the way this condition turns him into an animal, ruled by his desire to rut, to be taken, to be claimed. This is why he never let Steve and him go beyond heavy petting. He was grateful for the excuse of Steve’s illness, truth be told, grateful that it stopped him having to admit to Steve that if he had sex with him, on heat or not, he worried that he would stop being Bucky, and just be the sum of his anatomy. That maybe he would lose all his ambitions, stop wanting to box, or fight, or get a job, and all he would want to do was wait at home for Steve, cook his dinner real nice, take his clothes off whenever Steve looked at him, and let him knock him up.

The books have one mention of a male omega, though it’s probably apocryphal, all tied in to fears about sexuality, about how to code men who didn’t subscribe to the norm. Male omegas come into heat the same way female omegas do: they want to mate with an alpha, their body lubricates to prepare itself, and they are fertile and ready. A cycle should last up to eight days, and the omega should eat sugary foods, drink plenty of fluids, and – the book advises – just let the alpha have their way with them. It cuts the cycle short and helps the hormones rebalance themselves.

Bucky slams the book shut then, goes to sit back out on his balcony, thinks about how he would let Steve do that to him, he would happily go to the executioner’s block if Steve was holding the axe. Which is one of the reasons he is in London, one of the reasons he has to run – because confronted with those blue eyes, that weight of history, all he’s ever wanted to do is submit. 

 

***

Bucky gets his suppressants now from a guy who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone whose sister is an omega. 

The guy – Aaron – is remarkably polite for a drug dealer. Big beard, cap, sweatpants, old Nas t-shirt, but an accent which wouldn’t be out of place in Buckingham Palace, no matter how many ts he tries to drop. Aaron very seriously tells him, ‘You know you could get these prescribed on the NHS?’ and Bucky just snorts, imagines going in to see a regular doctor and Kirk’s medical notes suddenly lasting 25 pages as they take in his metal arm on top of his omega heat cycle. 

‘Aaron, I appreciate it, but my ma’s scared of doctors, always has been. And she’s embarrassed by the condition.’

Aaron looks sympathetic, ‘She doesn’t have to be, mate, plenty of people used to be omegas. I wrote my dissertation on the alpha panic of 1951.’

Bucky, practiced as he is, cannot mask his surprise. ‘You wrote your dissertation on _that_?’

‘Yeah, masters from Cambridge, mate, but don’t go bandying it around. No one will believe you,’ Aaron winks, touches the end of his nose, and strolls out of the pub slowly.

Bucky is in some dive in Peckham, well, one of those bars owned by a private management company which is made to look like a dive. 

He drinks a pint, even though he knows it will have very limited effect. After all the experimentation they did, taking away his ability to enjoy a cold one might have been one of the cruelest acts of all. He has an early shift in the morning at the bakery, but he can already feel his heat starting, washes a tablet down with a gulp of beer, pockets the cheap bag of peanuts Aaron bought him.

His flat is now stocked full of the type of things an omega needs for heat – fruit, soda, ice by the bag. He drinks pot after pot of sugary peppermint tea, knows it’s probably a placebo, but had found it recommended on a website and can’t get enough of the stuff. He texts Beth, the girl who likes him, and asks her to swap her shift with him, gets an immediate ‘sure, you ok?’ and texts back ‘yeah just got a bad cold. Thanks.’

He fills the bath with ice, pulls off his boots, his jeans, his shirt, gets in and feels at home right away. Wonders if it’s a bit fucked up how much he likes the cold, given the past seven decades of his life. Should he by rights enjoy the warmth of the heats? It’s been two weeks since the last heat, and he knows if he didn’t have the body he has, the regenerative capabilities he has, he’d be in a whole world of pain. As it is he can get through it, mainly because they’re so short, wonders how the hell he’d get through it if it really was eight days long. Wonders what that might be like, shut up in a cabin maybe, in Canada, somewhere really cold, with Steve taking care of him, Steve undressing him, giving him water, ice chips, running him showers, and fucking him, knotting him, for hours and hours until Bucky can’t stand any longer.

He fists his cock then, tugs his foreskin over the head, imagines Steve’s there, his big hand over Bucky’s, ‘tell me how you like it, Buck,’ he’d be so earnest, so desperate to please. Bucky only manages a few strokes before he comes. It gives him ten minutes respite, enough to remember to drink his Lucozade and pick up his lube from the floor. It’s not enough to get rid of the dull ache from his temples, or the itching buzzing which runs beneath his skin, the desperate pulse, the desire to be full, to submit for an alpha. His door is double-locked and the chain is on. He knows those stories from his childhood about alphas breaking down the door of an omega on heat, he knows they’re probably bullshit, but he still can’t help himself imagining Steve in London, Steve smelling him, knowing it’s Bucky, and breaking in to the apartment. How Bucky would crawl to him, rub his face all over Steve’s lap, inhale that scent, and let Steve fuck him for hours.

When the heat dissipates, Bucky knows he will feel ashamed for what he desires – will tell himself he is wrong to want it, that it’s only the heat talking, not that the heat gives words to what he feels deep within his bones. But for now, he just lets himself feel.

*** 

Bucky’s well enough for work the next afternoon. His temperature is still up, but nowhere near heat levels, and his erection has gone down, he’s no longer leaking slick, and that horrible tender feeling all over his skin has disappeared. He showers again and again, just in case anyone might catch his scent, and then goes and does three hours of making lattes, and taking payment for loaves of sourdough, and getting winked at by the hot girl in the jazz band who plays on Wednesdays. 

He heads into Soho after work, slightly embarrassed at today’s mission, which is to buy some more lube, and try and get some weird herbal remedies he read about online. He knows they probably won’t work but they can’t do any harm, he figures. The sex shop on the corner of Old Compton Street always catches his eye – hard not to, given the mannequin men in chains in the window – and he swallows hard and goes in. He finds himself in the sex toy aisle. Most of them are terrifying looking, but he picks up a small vibrator, takes it to the till before he can talk himself out of it. He doesn’t know why he finds stuff like this so embarrassing: given everything he’s seen and done you’d think he would never be phased by the act of buying a dildo. He guesses it’s because the world has become so vocal about sex now. When he was in the army – the _army_ for chrissake – the most men had were pin-up drawings on the wall, most of them were girls whose bras had just fallen off, their hands covering their breasts. Those shocked ‘o’ mouths, long legs in suspenders. But they were just pen and ink. Now you see that level of nudity on daytime television, everyone’s expected to talk about their sex-life, their orientation, the whole kit and caboodle. He’s not ashamed of desiring men, it’s not _that_ that bothers him about his whole situation, but he still flushes as he hands over KY Jelly and the vibrator to the woman behind the till.

She scans the items slowly, chewing gum, seems bored by the whole interaction, until he hands her the money and their palms touch. She jolts back, and he could swear he sees her nostrils flare. He realizes she’s alpha at the same time as she realizes he’s omega. He stuffs his hands back in his pockets, settles back on his heels, waits to see what she’ll do. She’s probably fifty, dyed red hair in Bettie Page bangs, in a black vest and leather trousers. She’s small and bird-like, pretty, tattoos covering every inch of bare skin he can see.

‘You okay?’ she asks, finally, in a strong Yorkshire accent, which is absolutely not what he expects her to sound like.

‘Yeah, we got a problem?’ His posture is loose, but he’s ready to run if needs be. Though run from _what_ he doesn’t know, as if she’s going to leap the cash register and make him submit to her in the middle of a crowded store. He’s pleased to realize her scent isn’t affecting him. He can tell she’s alpha, but he feels no more than a flicker of interest, and a largely intellectual flicker at that. 

‘No problem, love,’ she looks sympathetic, purses her cherry red lips as she considers him. ‘You’re cycling, you know that? Shouldn’t you be at home with your feet up?’

He’s surprised, the first conversation he’s ever had about this with someone who isn’t Steve, and she’s so matter-of-fact. He shrugs, ‘I’ve got to work, I live alone… I, don’t have someone to do these things for me. My suppressants aren’t working any longer… I guess they don’t really make them for male omegas.’ He doesn’t know why he’s telling her this, years and years of living undercover on the edges of society suddenly falling away at the pure sympathy in her big green eyes. At her scent, maybe. Maybe it’s inevitable for him to submit, to tell her everything. Or maybe it’s that he’s only human, after all, it turns out.

‘Oh pet, that’s horrible. Look, let me give you some advice,’ she pulls out a piece of paper from the drawer and shakes her biro until it starts running ink. ‘There’s an omega specialist in London, Dr MacGregor. My Grandad was omega. Only one of his kind he ever knew of. He married a beta, rest of the family is betas, and then I pop out, alpha.’ She gestures ruefully at herself, ‘They could at least have made me taller.’

He huffs out a laugh. ‘My best friend is alpha. 5 foot 4 on a good day, when he’d style his hair particularly high. I guess it’s what’s on the inside that makes us, not what we look like.’

‘Yeah you’re built like a brick shithouse, I wouldn’t want to cross you. My grandad was the sweetest man, shy as anything, but he ran a club in York, used to crack heads and throw punches if he needed. But only when it was needed, he was never violent like.’ She looks up at the ceiling, suddenly teary. ‘Look, call the doctor, that’s his private line. Tell him Shirley sent you, that you’re similarly afflicted to Norman Barrett. He’ll see you. Cycling’s not good for you, it’ll mess up your insides. I know I’m a sticky-beak, I can’t help it. But I don’t like to see anyone struggle.’ She hands him the paper then, as well as his bag of purchases. ‘Let me know how it works out. And you ever want someone to talk to, my number’s there too, okay?’

‘That’s really kind of you,’ he feels moved by her gesture. Folds the number and slips it into his wallet, where it sits across from two different fake driving licenses and a wad of rolled fifty pound notes. Back in his pocket next to a knife and a couple of loose bullets.

Shirley reaches across, squeezes his hand, ‘Hey, it’ll be alright, love. And come on, giving my number to a handsome omega twenty years younger than me? It’s hardly my most altruistic move.’

Bucky snorts, tugs his baseball cap lower. ‘I guess not.’

‘I’m teasing,’ she says. ‘I’m gay. You do smell good though, I’ll give you that.’

Knowing she’s gay unlocks something in him, in how he feels about Steve. He thinks about it all the way home, as he picks up a takeout coffee from Costa, as he walks across Waterloo bridge, gives money to the Big Issue seller who sits on the steps there. That maybe what Steve and he feel for each other is real, not just down to a trick of their biology. Recasts all his memories of their conversations, when Steve would tell Bucky that Bucky ‘drove him wild’ and Bucky would say ‘it’s just biology’, as if that could ever encompass everything they are to each other. Bucky likes women, and he likes Steve, has never necessarily felt an attraction to another man, but really, when has he had a chance to? He’s been locked up for the better part of a century, how would he ever know who he is, who he’s attracted to.

When he gets home he folds and unfolds the number, over and over again. His calendar shows how regularly his heats are coming, even on suppressants he’s having short episodes too regularly. How can he hold down a job, let alone try and fight Hydra. If someone comes for him while he’s like this, there’ll be nothing he can do about it. Feels sick imagining how weak and helpless he would be.

He steels himself, flips a coin, and dials it from his burner phone. An older man answers, ‘Hello?’

‘Hi, um, Shirley gave me this number. She said you’re an expert in alphas and omegas.’

‘Oh, yes,’ there’s a pause then, Bucky hears him closing the door behind him. ‘I’m presuming you’re alpha? You can make an appointment through my normal office process, I’m not entirely sure why she’s given you my home number.’

‘I’m an omega,’ Bucky says, blurts it out because he knows he won’t say it otherwise. ‘Like her grandpa was.’

‘You’re sure?’ the doctor says, the soft Scottish burr more pronounced now. He sounds startled.

‘Yes I’m sure,’ he laughs. ‘Believe me I’m sure. My suppressants aren’t working and I’ve been cycling for a couple of months now.’

‘Okay, well, when can you come in? The sooner the better, really, my clinical hours start at 9am but I’ll move something, can you do 8:30am tomorrow, King’s?’ Bucky writes down the address obediently.

‘I’ll need your full name and medical records and-’ He interrupts himself with a ‘huh’, falls silent, hears Bucky’s silence and reacts to it. ‘I’m guessing you don’t have any of that? Were you ever diagnosed?’

‘I didn’t grow up in the kind of place where a boy omega could get diagnosed, sir,’ Bucky says, solemnly.

‘No, well, you’re not the only one. What can I call you?’

‘Kirk Turner,’ Bucky reels off the phone number he’s using for this identity as well. ‘I’m a vet,’ he adds. The best lies have a significant basis in truth. 

‘You made it through the army as a male omega? Hmm. I’m clearing my schedule for the morning. Don’t take any more suppressants. I’ll see you in the morning, Kirk.’ He rings off abruptly.

Bucky doesn’t know what to do with himself after he gets off the phone, finds himself online, googling Steve Rogers, wondering where he is. There haven’t been any CapSelfies posted on twitter for the past few days, last sighting seems to have been at an airport a few days ago, though the girl wasn’t sure if it was him – he had an ugly beard, she says. Bucky wonders where Steve is going, where he’s flying to, presumes it’s some S.H.I.E.L.D. mission and fervently hopes that he’s okay, that he’ll be okay. 

‘Ugh, the beard might be the only thing which can kill my CapBoner’  
‘What is he doing covering that beautiful beautiful face?’  
‘RIP Cap’s jutting jaw’

Bucky unwillingly smiles at the replies to the girl’s tweet. Beard or no he still has a CapBoner, has had one since they were thirteen years old at least, size, superhero status, biology… if none of that hurt it, he can ignore a little patchy facial hair.

It’s been six weeks since he last saw Steve, and he counts every day away, hidden,as a success, even while it hurts when he thinks about it. Remembers the feel of Steve’s body on his, Bucky wrapped securely round him, holding hands, kissing, touching. He’s been running for a long time. He means what he said to Steve, that he was too scared of being caught, of Steve being dragged down with him, but part of him can admit he is also scare of what Steve means to him, of what being omega is. 

Rolls what Shirley said to him around in his mind a little, to get a feel for it. He’s always wondered if Steve likes him just because he’s omega, just because that’s what their bodies are supposed to _do_ like Bucky’s body is a puzzle and Steve’s knows how to solve it. But Shirley didn’t think so, could appreciate his scent, knew he was an omega, but she just… wasn’t in to him. Bucky never knew he could be so pleased to be rejected. So. Steve wants him, for Bucky, not because he’s a man out of time, with a condition that no one even speaks of any longer. But because of who he is.

He sleeps soundly. Nervous about the morning but it’s taking action, another piece in the puzzle of reclaiming his body. If the doctor can fix him then he can bed down here, take some time to follow his leads on Fletcher and List, then disappear somewhere else, maybe Montenegro, somewhere with a bit of sun, lie low for a while, work on his memories.

When he sleeps he dreams of faceless bodies operating on him, hands holding him down, and Steve, scrubs and mask on, just sat there, watching.

*** 

He’s early to Denmark Hill, couldn’t even think of eating breakfast. After years of rarely eating, he finds his stomach is the first thing to betray him, roiling at the taste of coffee, or even bagels sometimes. The food now is too rich, too much of it, he doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to being able to eat all he wants, and then go back for second helpings.

He walks the perimeter of the building twice before he goes in, before he can make himself go in. He finds himself watching with a frown every consultant who walks past, every patient, every nurse. He’s never been somewhere like this: his experiences of being patched up all took place in shadowy underground prisons, where no one knew his name, where everyone called him ‘it’ when they had to refer to him at all.

The receptionist at clinic seven is a nice, handsome young man, with neat dreadlocks, and a soft voice, who asks him for his name and then says, frowning, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t have an appointment for you, maybe I’m spelling it wrong…’

Bucky feels sick, like this was all some sort of joke, some way to lure him here, like Shirley and the nurse and Doctor MacGregor are all in on it until he sees a tall man push through the doors.

‘It’s alright, Kevin, I squeezed him in last minute.’

Doctor MacGregor is not how Bucky expected an omega to look. He’s very tall, taller than Bucky, and broad-shouldered. He must be 70 if he’s a day but he’s very handsome, in that Charlton Heston way, with his hair swept off his forehead, and his sleeves rolled up to reveal solid forearms.

‘Kirk, yes?’

‘Yes,’ Bucky takes his hand, which is warm and dry. His handshake is firm, but not too firm, he makes eye contact, in a way which says he has nothing to prove.

‘Come on through,’ he gestures to his office.

The room is full of newspaper clippings and photographs of Doctor MacGregor with his arm around another man, shorter, plump, always grinning. Here they’re holding a baby, here they’re getting married, here they’re on holiday.

‘That’s Toby, my partner. He’s a psychotherapist,’ Doctor MacGregor looks amused when he catches Bucky’s gaze again.

‘I didn’t mean to stare,’ Bucky flushes. He’s more used to people not hiding their sexuality now, thinks it’s a good thing, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t catch him unawares now and then. How different this time is to his. Better in so many ways, but still so unfamiliar.

‘It’s fine, I put them out for a reason. I don’t see any need to hide who I am.’

‘So you _are_ an omega?’ Bucky asks, because stupid as it sounds, the doctor looks like every alpha ideal come to life. 

‘We come in all shapes and sizes you know,’ he chuckles. ‘Toby’s alpha, not that you’d know it… Not unless you saw him lose at Monopoly.’

Bucky’s eyes are glazing slightly, the smell of the place getting to him.

‘You find the hospital stressful? Concentrate on your breathing, head between your knees if you need.’ Doctor MacGregor takes his pulse, frowns until it starts to slow. ‘I’m going to get you a glass of water. Don’t even think about running,’ he adds for good measure.

Bucky is thinking about it, but not seriously, knows he won’t follow through with leaving now he’s made it this far. He makes himself sip the water and counts his breaths until he feels himself under control again.

‘I was a POW,’ he says, finally, again with sticking to mostly-truth. ‘Afghanistan. I have issues with examinations.’

‘It’s okay, Kirk, I promise to talk you through everything I do. I’ll do an internal examination, and take a swab then. The nurse can come and be in here as your companion whilst that takes place, you’re well within your rights to ask for that.’ He puts some reading glasses on, pulls out a fountain pen. ‘Now, can you tell me how old you were when you first presented as omega?’

‘I was sixteen.’ Sweating and sweating, crying out, over and over. His ma thought it was scarlet fever, blamed Steve, thought he had caught something. No one knew what it was until Steve had intervened, spun them some lie about a fever, helped Bucky get his pills every month until Bucky stopped talking to Steve about his heats, set about finding a way to stop them altogether.

‘And how long did the heat last?’

‘Only one day. I took suppressants and whisky that night and when I woke up I was back to normal.’ It had changed everything for him: an excuse to explain why he wanted Steve at least, though an excuse which brought with it its own set of problems.

‘And have you had heats since then?’

‘I had heats occasionally before I enlisted.’ He used to pray that Steve’s suppressants would make him immune to the scent, used to sleep locked in the bathroom and hear Steve clomping around outside, claiming that he couldn’t smell a thing, that Bucky should come out so he could hold him. Used to snicker at that because it was the kind of line Bucky would have used, had the situation been the other way around.

‘And you got through enlistment okay?’

It is no longer legal to discriminate against alphas and omegas and, honestly, they’re so rare he wonders if anyone would even know how to check for it now. But back then, even though boy omegas were the subject of – dirty – legend, he could still never risk discovery.

‘I took suppressants constantly, too many, if I’m honest, and then I was on rations, and then I was captured and… they just stopped.’

The doctor nods, scratches his chin, makes some more notes. ‘With limited food and resources, your body correctly notes that you couldn’t survive heat, that circumstances weren’t right to support a pregnancy. The food you got went to keep you alive. And now?’

‘It’s been a couple of years since I got out, and I’ve been going into heat a lot. I’m taking suppressants every day but it’s been bad the past few months. They don’t last long but they’re…’

‘They’re exhausting,’ the doctor’s eyes are soft. ‘I’m going to read you some symptoms now, tell me which you experience. Temperature spike? Aching skin? Sensitivity? Erections? Self-lubrication?’

Bucky nods at every one, his hands gripping the seat, reminds himself to be careful, imagines the doctor’s face if Bucky’s metal arm ripped through the chair. The kindly doctor transformed into a cowering mess under his desk: imagines fighting, and gunshots, and bodies. He shudders, takes his cap off, twists the brim instead so he has something to do with his hands.

‘You’re ready for blood, and saliva?’ 

Bucky nods, holds out his right arm, doesn’t even flinch when the needle goes in, looks at the photographs around the walls, the story they spell out of love, of settling down. Of family.

‘Open wide,’ the doctor swabs the inside of his cheeks. ‘Trousers off, boxers off, if you could just arrange yourself on the bed, that would be grand. Would you like a nurse in?’

‘No, I’ll be alright.’ His own experiences of hospitals couldn’t be further than this office, with the orchids on the desk and the desk tidy made by a grandchild, proudly displayed despite its wonky edges. 

The doctor pulls the curtain so he’s on his own by the bed, undresses efficiently, covers himself with the sheet they have left.

The doctor’s hands are professionally bland, clad in latex gloves as he examines Bucky. The feeling of the speculum is cool and unexpected. ‘Just focus on breathing out, think of something nice, it’ll pass.’ He thinks of Steve, of taking him to a baseball game, of them laughing together, eating cheap hot dogs, drinking cold beer. There’s a scratch and then it’s over.

‘We’re done, you can get dressed.’

Doctor MacGregor is behind his desk when Bucky comes out. ‘Your body’s cycling because after years without heats, it’s trying to kickstart your reproductive system again. My advice to you is to let it. To let yourself have a heat, and to find a willing alpha if you can, or a beta if not, and to come off suppressants for six months whilst your body catches up with everything it’s been through.’

‘I can’t do that,’ Bucky grits his jaw.

‘You don’t have any choice,’ his tone is mild, at odds with his words. ‘If you keep trying suppressants you’re going to keep having mini-heats anyway, and they might well stop working all together.’

‘How long will my heat last?’

‘A week. Look, Kirk, I know this feels like the end of the world. I hated going into heat, used to feel like it stripped me of all identity, all consent, but that’s just what doctors who know nothing about us preach. You’re not going to roam the streets begging for a knot, you won’t have sex with anyone you wouldn’t have sex with normally. If no one’s with you you’ll just have a week at home of erections and being uncomfortable and sleeping on a towel. You’ll lose some weight, you might get really spotty. But you’ll be okay. And if there’s someone special-’

‘I could never be with him,’ Bucky interrupts. ‘After what I did in the war, what I saw. He’s so pure, so good, I’d drag him down to my level.’

‘That’s not your decision to make, though, Kirk. It’s his. Will you promise to stick around long enough for me to give you your results, and keep any eye on you?’

Bucky shrugs.

‘I really don’t care who you are, you know.’

‘What do you get out of it?’ Bucky’s tone is rough, suspicious of this treatment when all he’s used to normally is running, looking over his shoulder, not able to trust anyone.

The doctor steeples his fingers on his desk. ‘I was ridiculed, assaulted, and ostracized when I grew up. I do this because I want to help make sure others don’t feel so alone. And, because you’re a fascinating specimen for my research.’

Bucky grins at that, a quick flash of teeth. ‘You’ll keep me anonymous?’

‘I’ll keep you anonymous,’ he nods, solemnly.

‘Then I’ll come back. Same time in a week?’

‘Yes, and you have my number if you need anything in the meantime.’ He gets up, signaling the end of their time. ‘I know this is inconvenient for you, unsettling after everything you have been through, but being omega doesn’t have to mean anything worse than the occasional discomfort. And it can mean a lot of good, too. I wouldn’t change my family for the world.’

‘Sure, doctor, I really appreciate this, you have no idea,’ he takes the doctor’s hand. ‘I’ll see you in a week.’

‘No more dodgy pills from drug-dealers, okay? I mean it. You don’t know what they put in them.’

Bucky thinks of Jimmy, of Aaron, nods his assent. Something about the doctor’s confidence, how self-assured he is, makes something in Bucky just want to give in, and do whatever he’s told. Realizes maybe it’s not an omega thing, maybe it’s just a Bucky thing. Doesn’t really know what to do with that information.

When he gets home he pours the pills down the sink, washes them away so he won’t be tempted to take them again. He feels okay, not like he’s about to spiral off into ‘the passion of the rut’ as he’s read it described. He makes ramen, writes in his notebook, showers off the hospital smell.

He checks CapSelfie again and there’s no new hits, but there has been a small flurry of tweets about Black Widow being in London. He remembers Steve being spotted at the airport. Thinks about List. Wonders if S.H.I.E.L.D.’s business is going to intersect with his, if even now Steve is in some fancy hotel in Mayfair, or undercover somewhere, on his way to put himself in danger while Bucky is useless in South London. He feels like he should run again but he’d promised the doctor a week. Imagines how it would feel to go into heat on the plane and dismisses it as a bad plan.

He reassures himself that London is a big place. Takes his mug of peppermint tea out to the balcony, scrolls through selfie after selfie with Steve, fancies that he can see the sadness in Steve’s eyes, the exhaustion of it all. Knows that he’s contributing to that: if Steve could just give up, just leave him be. But Steve’s never backed away from a fight, knows that he’s just going to keep coming. So they’re in the same city, so what. He’ll give the doctor this time, sort his condition out, and then he’s gone, without a trace. Somewhere where no one can find him.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Boys weren’t omegas. Not outside of blue movies, or bluer songs, at least, the kind of anecdotes too ribald even for soldiers to tell. Girls were omegas, sometimes, but rarely, even in those days. Dying breeds, he guessed. When he was the asset it had stopped entirely, he had thought it all over: feels sick thinking of what they would have done to exploit him if he had suffered back then. But now, 2014, eating three meals a day, sleeping regularly in a safe bed, the old ghost has come back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Write the a/b/o fic you want to see in the world. Set after The Winter Soldier.
> 
> The title comes from Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse. I know where this is going and it's going to be an epic route to a happy ending.
> 
> Steve's chapter - there's a slight crossover in time with Bucky's previous chapter, and the same will be true of Bucky's next chapter. Sorry for the delay in posting: I went on holiday!

Steve has been antsy to get to London from the moment Natasha mentions it. There’s no surety that Bucky even is there, after all, could be the first stop in many, and he’s not letting another two years go by before he sees his best friend again. 

He has been ignoring his suppressants, which seem to glare at him every time he opens the cupboard door in his bathroom. He has been lying routinely to every physician: yes, he’s still taking them, no, they don’t seem to be having an effect. He has repeated the story he told Dr Yoon maybe five or six times, and it doesn’t seem to be having the impact he had hoped for.

‘Why aren’t I in London, yet?’ he asks Natasha, furious after yet another pointless examination where they establish that indeed his baseline temperature is up, indeed he is sweating rather a lot, indeed he seems significantly more irritable than they would expect of Captain America.

‘It’s bureaucracy,’ she spits out the word like it’s glass in her mouth. ‘Hopeless, pointless bureaucracy. So Dr Yoon thinks you need to get to see a specialist, but they’re concerned that taking you to see a specialist means more people having to find out you’re alpha, and most of all, no one that senior seems to know about your ‘condition’.’ She does sarcastic air-quotes then, rolls her eyes for good measure. ‘So there’s no one senior enough to make the decision to send you somewhere. Can you not, like, ramp up the stakes a little? Get a little bit fighty or something?’ She mimes boxing the air, obviously not picking up on his mood.

‘I have to sit through one more examination I’m going to get more than a bit violent.’ He realizes that he is clenching and unclenching his fists rhythmically, can hear his blood rushing in his ears. ‘All I want to do is find Bucky, and stop sweating so damned much.’ 

‘It’s freezing in here,’ Natasha says, looking around his apartment. ‘I feel like I should be wearing a parka. I keep expecting to trip over a penguin.’

‘Well, isn’t that just hil-fucken-arious,’ Steve snaps, and Natasha widens her eyes, puts her palms up in supplication. 

‘Steve, this is what we do. I’m funny, you roll your eyes, but you secretly like it.’

He kicks the wall, meaning it to be a glancing blow but in reality taking out a major chunk of the plaster. ‘I don’t secretly like it right now. If we don’t find Bucky soon, I’m going to go into headquarters and just start trashing the place, start using my shield like a Frisbee, see how they like that.’

Natasha still looks concerned, ‘Okay so I know we thought this was a good plan, but are you sure coming off your suppressants was really the best idea?’

Steve looks mutinous, ‘We made a decision and I’m sticking to it. I’ve been doing my own research and it looks like keeping me on them for years, without a break, could well leave me infertile. Not that S.H.I.E.L.D. gives a damn about any of that crap, all they want me for is to be some government-authorized goon, cracking heads wherever they dictate, never allowed to think for myself, or have my own life or my own interests.’ He roughs his hand through his air, closes his eyes, tries to summon the remnants of his self-control. ‘Do you really think if I find Bucky, the government will try him for his crimes?’

Natasha looks wary, pinches the bridge of her nose. ‘Do you want to know what I actually think, or will you lose your temper again?’

Now the anger has burned through him, he just feels hollow, exhausted, like he could sleep for a week. ‘I won’t lose my temper again.’ He’s embarrassed, all of a sudden, feels petulant and ashamed all at once.

‘Steve, they’ll never let him go. He’s responsible for so many deaths that we know of, even more we don’t know of.’

‘But he was brainwashed! Tortured!’

‘I know all that, I’m on your side, remember,’ she lays a calming hand on his arm. ‘Jeez, you really are burning up. Let me get you a drink, one sec.’ He hears her padding around in his kitchen, likes the sound of someone else being in the apartment with him. He hasn’t taken Sharon up on that coffee yet, knows right now he’d probably say or do something really weird, and then they’d put him under apartment arrest or something.

Natasha brings him a pint of ice-water, and a coke for herself. ‘Sit,’ she gestures at the couch, yanking him over towards her by the elbow. ‘You’re too tall, it makes me uneasy the way you loom around like that.’

He sits, heavily, puts his head in his hands. 

‘I have a plan, Steve,’ Natasha says. She opens the can, tips her head back and takes a long gulp. ‘Mm, sugar and chemicals. Delicious.’

‘Your plan?’ he prompts.

‘Hey, let me have a little suspense here,’ she says. ‘The only way to keep Bucky safe is to bring Fury in on it.’

‘But Bucky tried to kill Fury.’

‘He did, yes, but Fury’s not the kind of man to hold that against someone. What’s a little attempted murder between friends. He’s pragmatic. Bucky was under mind-control, and since he disappeared, we’ve had no trouble from him. All he does is occasionally deliver Hydra parcels to police stations.’

‘You know about that?’ Steve doesn’t know why he’s surprised. Natasha _always_ knows about everything. He supposes decades of being honed as a weapon will create a paranoia that’s eased by making sure you are always in control of the intelligence. 

‘So he’s on our side now, and he has super-strength, super-healing, and a fuck-off bionic arm. We bring Fury in, we persuade him that Bucky will work for us, and he’ll give him a cover.’

‘And where does that leave me?’ Steve pictures his secret dream: the two of them back in an apartment in Brooklyn, somewhere he can keep Bucky safe, where they can build a life together. Knows quite well that Bucky will have no interest in Steve keeping him safe, will laugh and say it’s normally the other way around, what with Steve’s hotheadedness.

‘It leaves you with an alternate Captain America,’ she slants a glance at him, as if she’s unsure of how he’ll react. Steve is unsure of how he’s going to react, to be honest.

He pushes himself off the couch, abruptly, looks down at her, ‘What?’

She stands up, pokes her bony little finger into his chest. ‘You fight like him, I’ve seen you two – he can match you blow for blow, he can throw that shield back like it weighs nothing, less than nothing. So, he takes your uniform, he takes your mask, no one looks too closely. There’s two of you, all of a sudden. We make it hard for anyone to know where you are, or who you are, and you finally get that private life you’ve wanted since you came out of the ice.’

He sits back down, suddenly, feels weak, the idea of someone else being Captain America. ‘I don’t know whether this plan is genius or madness.’

‘It’s a little of both,’ she shrugs. ‘But I think it will work. You and I were burned by S.H.I.E.L.D. before, burned by not knowing what’s going on or who we’re fighting for. This would give you a bit of distance, a cover if you ever need to escape.’

‘And what if Bucky doesn’t agree?’ Steve’s voice feels a little like it’s trembling, but Natasha is too polite to mention it. A first time for her, he thinks.

‘It’s up to you to make him agree, Cap. But if anyone can you can. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. Fury’s going to want him examined, questioned, and to ascertain he’s safe. But if he passes that-’

‘He will,’ Steve is sure of it.

‘-then welcome aboard Captain America 2: 2 Bucky 2 Furious.’

Steve smiles, ‘You’re a clever woman, you know that?’

‘I have my moments,’ she takes another glug of her soda, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, and belches loudly.

He wrinkles a nose, ‘Ladies don’t do that where I come from.’

‘Oh really, and where do you come from? The 1920s?’

They both laugh far too loudly at that, it’s a pretty bad joke and Natasha makes it often. But Steve appreciates the gesture, appreciates her for planning with him, for putting her trust in him. He’s lonely a lot of the time, but he’s a lot less lonely now he has her and Sam around him. He doesn’t entirely know why they’re going along with his search for Bucky, especially after everything Bucky did, but he’s not going to push it too hard – he doesn’t want to examine a good thing too closely.

‘You want to stay here tonight?’ Steve asks. He thinks Natasha will say no, but she thinks about it.

‘Are you going to go into heat and try and hump me or anything like that?’ she says, and her tone is light but he senses that the question is real.

He rolls his eyes, ‘That’s really not how heats work, Nat. You’re a beautiful woman, of course, but I’m not going to be driven into a frenzy.’

‘Okay, can I have a T-shirt then? I have a toothbrush with me just in case of eventualities like these.’

‘In case a superhero wants you to sleepover platonically?’ Steve asks, curiously, as he moves into the bedroom.

‘Hey, you don’t judge my life, I don’t judge yours,’ she winks.

‘I just like the sound of someone else in my apartment,’ he admits, looks over his shoulder at where she’s framed in the doorway, taking in his old photos, his record collection, how neat and stark everything is.

‘You ever lived alone before?’

‘No, not in those days. Everyone lived on top of each other. And then there was Bucky. We shared an apartment for years.’ He tosses her a shirt.

‘And no one ever said anything?’ She catches the shirt, strips out of her clothes with no embarrassment, so he looks at the wall hard, embarrassed enough for both of them. He knows the question she is asking.

‘Lots of guys shared apartments then, and Bucky was… well, he always had a dame on his arm, sometimes two. He was the most incredible dancer, and a boxer. A _champion_ boxer. Athletic, tall, muscular. I was in love with him for years, but no one would ever look at him and think we were gay.’

‘But you were?’ She looks young, all of a sudden, barefoot with turquoise nail varnish on her toes, her hand pulling the t-shirt straight so it hangs right by her knees.

‘I don’t know, Natasha. I was in love with Peggy too, and Bucky certainly loved a lady with curves. But we used to sleep in the same bed, and kiss, and hold each other. I never really gave it a label… he was just my constant. I desired him, I suppose,’ flushes as he says this, busies himself with making the bed for her. ‘And I was in love with him. I _am_ in love with him,’ he corrects himself.

‘Even after everything he did, you can still love him?’ Natasha is twisting the hem of her t-shirt, and he realizes she’s not just asking for Bucky.

‘Bucky was turned into a weapon. He was abused, manipulated, controlled. He does good now.’ He folds back the blanket on the bed for her and she wriggles down. He tucks her in, kisses her on the forehead. ‘You do good now. You’re worthy of love. Anyone would be lucky to have you.’

‘I wasn’t talking about me,’ she says quickly, but she puts no effort into the lie, sighs quietly after a moment. ‘Good night, Steve.’

He switches the light off, and is mostly out of the room when he hears her voice, so small he nearly misses it. ‘Thanks.’

*** 

The next few weeks are a blur of doctor visits, but what he remembers most about them is how bored he is. He’s banned from active duty, has nothing to do. Sam comes over a few times and brings his old Nintendo with him, beats Steve at MarioKart more times than he cares to admit.

And Steve reads. He reads everything he can get his hands on. Bucky’s files, intel on Hydra, medical reports about alphas, and omegas, research on the specialist facilities around the world, theories on why alphas and omegas dying out (which range from better diet to fluoride in water). The doctors have decided that being irritable and sweaty isn’t reason enough to take him to a specialist center, and he grows more and more paranoid that the trail on Bucky will grow cold, that he’ll never find him again. 

It’s when he’s finally decided to find another way there that the heat hits him, of course, like a sledgehammer on the back of his knees. One moment he’s idly flicking through channels, trying to find a daytime quiz show to yell at, and the next it’s as if someone’s lit a fire at the base of his spine. He has enough foresight to text Natasha and Sam – Nat replies with the flame emoji and ‘I’m calling Dr Yoon’ – and then he’s totally mindless with it.

All he wants to do is have sex, rut, mate. He wants Bucky there, more than he normally does even, he wants to bite Bucky, to mount him, to claim him. Steve drinks endless pints of ice water, shakes and shivers with it, cannot bear the feel of anything on his skin. He jerks off ten, twenty, times, til he’s sore with it, til his skin stings with it and it’s still not enough, he doesn’t think it’s ever going to be enough.

By day three he feels like his head is going to explode. All he’s doing is drinking water and Gatorade, taking cold showers, sweating and shivering and coming. Painkillers have no impact, nothing takes the edge off except jerking off and even that respite lasts no more than a few minutes, thirty minutes max. He’s never had a heat before, maybe his body wasn’t capable of it before the serum, and after the serum he never got a chance to find out, he was on suppressants right away. 

Sam and Natasha text him, Dr Yoon leaves him several voicemails, but he doesn’t call back, feels mutinous about the whole thing, that they’ve let him get to this point, and that he’s on his own struggling through this rather than with Bucky, where he’s supposed to be.

Day four is when his heat breaks, finally. He wakes up disoriented, but he can think straight for the first time in days, and he can tolerate the feel of the warm water in the shower, the tug of his clothes when he puts them on doesn’t make him want to rip them straight off again. He’s not in a constant, mindless, state of arousal.

He turns up at Dr Yoon’s offices unannounced, looking like a bag of crap, he’s sure. She winces when she sees him.

‘You gonna send me to a specialist, yet, Doc? Because I’m not much of a weapon for the government right now. Hell, if the bad guys turned up I’d probably just try and have sex with them.’

She winces, maybe at the uncharacteristic use of profanity, or the frank description of his heat. ‘I’ve got you a referral, finally. I’m sorry, I had to jump through hoop after hoop, no one really understands what it means, they’re acting like you just have a cold, or something.’

‘I’ve spent the past four days feeling like death, worse than scarlet fever, even. I want to get this fixed.’

‘You’re going to London. Incognito, not on official business, it’s all very hush hush. You’ve got an appointment with an alpha and omega specialist, a Dr MacGregor. We want this fixed as much as you do.’ She twists her wedding ring when she’s nervous, and she’s twisting it over and over.

‘What are you so frightened of?’ he asks, harsher than he means to. ‘You’re not the one whose biology is taking over.’

‘I’m frightened for you, Steve. You probably don’t believe me but I do care for you, you’re not a weapon to me… You’re a man.’ She lowers her voice. ‘I’m frustrated we haven’t been able to fix this sooner, okay? I’m worried for what will happen if you go into heat on the plane. Or if they can’t fix this. I know my fears are silly, but they’re still there.’

He feels guilty, but not that guilty, feels that this is really all they deserve, for not listening to him, for letting it get to this point. 

‘You fly tonight. Your temperature’s down, and your hormone levels are better than when I saw you just before the heat, so I want to get you out of here quickly. You’re on a commercial flight out of JFK. Natasha’s insisted on accompanying you, in case anything happens, but she’ll only make herself known if she needs to.’

He snorts, ‘Natasha doesn’t need to babysit me.’

‘She likes babysitting you,’ Dr Yoon smiles, finally. ‘And I’m not saying no to her. None of us are paid enough to say no to Natasha.’ She hands him an envelope, ‘Tickets, Air BnB details, maps, appointment letter, everything’s in here. I didn’t know I was a PA as well as a doctor, but given the last month, I figure it’s better for me to do it if I want it to be done.’

‘I appreciate that,’ he takes them off her, unfolds the envelope. ‘Natasha’s staying with me?’

‘Same apartment block, different apartment. If you get sick she’ll know what to do. I want you to take some electrolyte sachets with you, and try not to get into any fights.’

‘I can’t promise that, ma’am.’

‘I know Steve,’ she sighs, turns back to her computer screen. ‘I’m in contact with the doctor, and if he fixes you up you’ll be safe to go back on active duty. But only if I’m convinced you’re okay, so no arguing on that one, Rogers.’

He ironically salutes, and she frowns. ‘Be well, Cap. There’s a lot of people who rely on you.’

‘Don’t I know it,’ he says, feeling the weight of the world on his – admittedly, broad – shoulders now. 

He has time to pack when he’s home, and to download everything he can on List, the Winter Soldier, alphas and omegas onto his kindle. Also loads it with the latest John Grisham novel because he has no taste in fiction, as Bucky always used to tell him. Bucky was always the more academic, the more intellectual of the two: Steve was the artistic one, Bucky couldn’t draw for shit. He packs his sketchbooks, art supplies, maps, ideas where Bucky might be going. Texts Sam who replies, ‘See you in London.’

Steve calls him then, ‘You’re coming too?’

‘Well, not officially, but I’ve got some vacation days to use, thought Natasha could use some back-up.’

‘You’re worried what will happen if I find Bucky, aren’t you?’ Steve knows his voice sounds sharp but can’t help himself.

‘Hey, what kind of a friend would I be if I wasn’t a bit worried that the guy who tried to kill you might, you know, try and kill you again.’

‘He didn’t try and hurt me last time,’ Steve insists. 

There’s silence on the other end of the line and then, ‘Yeah, though, that lovebite looked pretty nasty, man.’

Steve sniggers, the first time he can register laughing, feeling any kind of amusement, in the past week at least. ‘Hopefully he won’t try to kiss me to death.’

‘Captain America has no sexlife, Captain America has no sexlife,’ Sam chants. The pause stretches for a while, Steve knows there’s more censure coming. ‘But if stuff goes wrong, I want to be there. If you get ill again, or he runs… I want to support you.’

‘I owe you and Natasha, more than I can say,’ Steve says, finally, eyes wet.

‘Yeah, just let me ebay your shield and we’re even. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ 

Steve hangs up, tidies his apartment, wonders when he’ll be back, if he’ll be back. Wonders what the Doctor will say, if they’ll find List, if they’ll find Bucky, finds himself jiggling his knee all the way to the airport.

He’s been antsy the whole way, worried that he’s going to come into heat again. He still feels more on edge than usual: for a kid growing up in New York he’s used to being bumped into, and normally it doesn’t make him want to shove the person out the way and tell them to watch where they’re going. Maybe being alpha means being selfish, he wonders, though more likely his body is just adjusting to being without suppressants after years of artificial hormones. Natasha had said to imagine it just like really bad PMS, and he’s got a newfound respect now for how women go about their business if they spend 25% of the time wanting to kill everyone around them.

He resents the fact they’ve got him in economy when he’s about a foot too tall for it. ‘I’m sorry ma’am,’ he apologizes, after the third time he’s shifted in his seat and accidentally knocked into the woman next to him. 

She ignores him in favour of catching the attention of the stewardess, asks for another rum and coke in response, and ‘are you sure there aren’t any empty seats?’

The air hostess is extremely apologetic, ‘I’m sorry, we’re fully-booked. At least it’s not a United flight,’ she adds, with a side-eye to Steve, who snorts obediently. The woman does not look amused, and Steve pretends to sleep for the rest of the flight, staying as still as he possibly can.

He doesn’t think of Bucky, resolutely doesn’t think of Bucky, just in case it sparks a heat, causes those sensations and emotions to rise up again and take him over, while he’s trapped in the air. 

It’s cold and grey when they land, early morning London. He’s exhausted, and knows he has an appointment at the hospital at 3pm. All he wants to do is sleep, and he’s grateful not to be recognized by anyone in the airport, makes it to the taxi rank and pulls his cap over his face, sleeps all the way from Heathrow to Camberwell.

The block is nice, gated and modern, and his apartment is compact but clean: high ceilings, thick walls, not too many windows. He draws all the blinds and collapses on the couch. ‘Do you want me to come with you to the hospital?’ his phone beeps, it’s Natasha.

‘I’m supposed to go alone in case I’m recognized.’

‘Fuck that.’ He gets a stream of angry emojis and then an eggplant, which he thought was supposed to represent a penis but maybe Sam _was_ just yanking his chain. ‘Eggplant a mistake. Tho, Dr Yoon is a DICK if she thinks I’m leaving you alone. No choice. Uber at 2pm, no excuses. Meet you in foyer.’

He switches his phone to silent then – not like he has anyone else who’ll be desperate to get in touch – and he naps, then showers. Showers again, then naps again, doesn’t know what to do with himself. He’s hot, he can feel it, and tries to damp down the rising sense of panic he feels. How _mortifying_ it will be if he goes into heat in the hospital, what he might do. Especially if the doctor really is an omega.

He’s always thought Bucky is wrong about Steve’s feelings for him – has always denied his claims that Steve only feels this way because Bucky is an omega, because of how he smells. But Steve has always been able to claim that with suppressants, Bucky has no impact on him at all. But now, without suppressants, on heat, maybe he will be reduced to base urges, nothing more. Shudders at the thought, it’s so unlike him, unlike who he sees himself as, he refuses to let himself be overruled by his biology. He’ll get through this through sheer willpower alone. He’s got through worse before.

*** 

The doctor is not what Steve expects. I mean, sure, Bucky is hardly the standard omega – he’s male for one thing – but he’s probably taken on board a few unconscious prejudices over the years when it comes to height, and appearance, and everything else.

He’s smoothly professional, asks Natasha to wait outside in a way that shuts her up, something Steve didn’t even know possible.

‘You came off heat yesterday, correct?’ his hand on Steve’s forehead is cool. ‘I don’t need a thermometer to tell me you’re about to go back into heat. You’re cycling.’ He shakes his head. ‘Déjà vu. I don’t often see alphas and omegas, it’s such a specialism you see, I’ve had to diversify into fertility. Busy myself writing papers on why our condition is dying out.’

‘Can you help me?’ Steve asks.

‘I can just put you back on suppressants,’ the doctor says, mildly. Steve feels sick, stays silent. ‘Your notes say the suppressants aren’t working, but I know there’s no trace of them in your system. But honestly, if there’s a reason you came off them, I’m prepared to think it’s valid?’

‘I wanted to find a reason to see a specialist and knew I had to take drastic measures,’ Steve says, finally, because that’s true, at least. The doctor can read into it whatever he wants to read into it.

‘I’m sure being Captain America brings with it its own set of challenges, let alone being alpha as well. Have you ever met others of your kind?’

‘A few in the army… my best friend is omega. He’s got his own set of challenges.’

The doctor blinks, ‘Omegism in males is so rare, even when I was younger. I thought omegas had died out in the 1970s if I’m honest, and yet. Hmm.’

Steve thinks he’s talking about Bucky, not someone who believes much in coincidences or chance. Knows the doctor won’t break confidentiality, but just wants to confirm it. ‘You see many omegas?’

‘Very few, as I’m sure you can imagine,’ his smile is bland, polished, professional discretion at its best. ‘Now, we’ve expedited your bloodwork and urine. You’re cycling, and right now, I don’t want to put you back on suppressants, as I’m not sure they’re going to help. Give it a week and come back, and I’ll give you a new course. But I recommend, going forward, that you come off twice a year, take a heat.’

‘Captain America doesn’t get time off,’ Steve says, solemnly.

The doctor smooths the wrinkle between his eyes, looks hard at Steve. ‘You might have come off your suppressants through choice, but a life without a break from them means they’ll stop working eventually. You either give your body a chance, dictate your heats, or you have them overwhelm you.’

He turns back to his computer, pulls up a couple of files. ‘Huh.’ He clicks around some more, frowns. ‘I have another theory, looking at these.’

‘Yeah?’ Steve hopes he’s going to say that his prognosis is wrong, that Steve is fine, everything’s okay after all.

‘Have you been near an omega you… have feelings for, recently? I know it’s unlikely given omega numbers but you said your best friend so…’

‘Yes, about six weeks ago,’ he can feel the flush travel up his chest.

‘And you were intimate?’

‘No,’ he swallows. ‘Well, we kissed, we spent the night together, nothing more than that.’ 

‘Look, it’s a rare phenomenon, but I suspect that if an alpha and omega are together for long enough, even with suppressants, if they have an attraction and a connection, it causes the suppressants to go haywire. It’s not a theory I’ve had a chance to test much, owing to geographic spread and low numbers… but I’ve seen it before. Experienced it myself,’ the doctor’s turn to flush. ‘When I met my husband we were both on suppressants. But I was in love with him and, after a time, they seemed to stop working. I suppose biology wanted us to be together, even if I was too busy at medical school to think I needed a relationship. He came second to textbooks for years, but… we made it work.’

‘So it wouldn’t happen with any omega?’ Steve asks, seriously. 

‘No, you’re not reacting to me, are you? I haven’t been on suppressants for years. Of course, the chances of me getting pregnant now are… well, zero. But my body still goes into heat.’

‘You smell nice,’ Steve admits.

‘But you’re not tempted to jump the desk to get to me, are you?’

Steve knows he isn’t, knows he hasn’t even noticed but considers it, tastes the air. ‘No.’

‘Ah,’ the doctor looks rueful. ‘My days of being seduced by incredibly handsome young men are behind me, I suppose. Pity.’ He smiles broadly at Steve, undeniably taking in his beet red ears and neck. ‘Our designation isn’t everything, Steve. You didn’t break down any doors to get at someone to mate with, did you? You won’t. Well, you might if it was your mate. I’ve even done some door-breaking in my time, when Toby got arrested once and-’ he stops himself, abruptly, chuckles. ‘That’s really not why you’re here, is it?’

Steve has broken down doors for Bucky, has rescued him, will do again, he knows it, will do whatever it takes to get him back. ‘So I just ride the heat out, and then go back on suppressants?’

‘Yes. I’d like to keep an eye on you for the next month or so, see if you keep cycling. I’ll regularly be testing your hormone levels. Any chance you’ll be seeing your omega friend any time soon?’ He asks it all business-like, not aware of how loaded the question is.

‘He’s in London,’ Steve says. ‘So, maybe.’

‘Hmm,’ the doctor says, one of those sounds which somehow conveys a lot. ‘A male omega, in London, what are the chances.’ His tone is dry. He looks hard at Steve, who looks away, his suspicions confirmed. ‘Well, come see me next week, same time, please. Hydrate, rest. No picking fights, no ‘revengers’ business or whatever it is you do, rampaging around destroying cities. Just stay at home, stay comfortable.’

‘Yes sir,’ Steve fights the urge to salute, knows an order when he hears one. He understands the importance of what the doctor is saying, knows he’ll listen – for once.

Natasha is waiting for him outside, texting furiously, her red hair tucked up under a beanie. She looks about twelve years old, he thinks, fondly.

‘So, you cured?’ she asks, falling into step with him.

‘Hardly,’ he rolls his eyes at her. ‘He knows I came off my suppressants, but he thinks I’d have had heat anyway, triggered by my attraction to Bucky.’

‘And you think Bucky’s here?’ her voice is low, pitched just for him.

‘I’m sure of it. Reading between the lines, he’s treating a male omega. And there’s what, like, one in four million of those… I don’t believe in coincidences.’

‘So I stake out the clinic, or Sam does, we follow him.’

‘Nothing that spooks him. He’s Bucky, but he was the asset for years, first sight of you or Sam and he’ll go running.’

‘Yeah, I guess,’ she frowns. ‘List works in this hospital.’

‘The Hydra doctor?’ Steve’s hand on her wrist is urgent, as he tugs her into an alcove.

‘Way to be subtle, Steve.’

‘What did you think I was going to do when you told me that, Natasha?’

She glares at him, shakes off his hand. ‘I saw him. He didn’t see me. He’s not in this clinic but he’s here, he sees private clients. So, I’ll watch him if not Bucky. Sam, too.’

‘I’ll help,’ he insists.

‘No, you won’t,’ her voice is gentle, but it brooks no disagreement. ‘You’re in no fit state to fight anyone. You think you saw one of the men who experimented on Bucky, who kept him in that condition, that you’d show restraint? That you’d ship him off to S.H.I.E.L.D. for them to deal with?’

He sighs, forces himself to unclench his fists. ‘No,’ he admits. ‘I’d try and kill him. Or, I wouldn’t try, I just would.’

‘And that sure as hell ain’t the Captain America way, now, is it?’ She slots her smaller hand into his, finding their way out of the hospital, like a mother leading a child. ‘You’ve got to rest, and sleep, and eat. And,’ she waggled her eyebrows, ‘jerk off _a lot_.’

He flushes again, feels like he’s blushed more in the last two months than in the previous hundred years, wonders if he’ll ever get used to how everyone else acts about sex now. 

Natasha delivers him to his door, with promises that he will sleep, and not go on any madcap quests to try and find List, no matter how much he wants to.

‘We’re a team,’ she insists. ‘We can handle this for you.’

It’s hard to doubt her, as she stands there, drawn up to her full height of 5 foot 2. Hard to doubt those eyes which he knows have seen so much in her brief life. But what choice does he have right now, with his skin aflame and his vision starting to swim. He nods his reluctant agreement, and she leaves him, then, her eyes sympathetic, probably taking in his bowed shoulders, the exhaustion in his posture. He’s never felt less like Captain America than he does now.

*** 

Steve uses the time before his heat takes over to look online, see if anyone has spotted him in London (they haven’t) and to research List. List is now Dr Thorpe, but despite the new hair colour, the professional smile, there is no mistaking the Hydra scientist. Steve winces, shifts in discomfort as he feels his heat gathering speed, closes his laptop down and lies there. London is cold, but that doesn’t seem to matter at all right now, alternately shivering and shaking, sweating and writhing. He lets himself think about Bucky – the broad span of his shoulders, the easy grin, the feel of his body curled around Steve’s, his hand open on Steve’s chest, feeling his heartbeat. He tries to hold on to that image, Bucky the way Bucky wants to be seen, tries his hardest not to let his mind think about Bucky on his knees, Bucky on his knot, Bucky begging for it.

He tries his hardest not to think of anything at all.

*** 

Sam’s the first person he sees when he comes out the other side, 48 hours later. Sam brings with him an entire bag of pastries and what has to be at least a litre of incredibly sweet, incredibly milky coffee. ‘I got them to put caramel syrup in it, they even drew a heart in the whipped cream,’ Sam points out, after Steve lets him in. ‘How you feeling?’

‘Worse than I look,’ Steve deadpans, but Sam winces as he takes him in so he supposes it’s probably not all that funny.

‘As bad as all that?’

‘Everything hurts. And I know Bucky’s here, know he’s at the same clinic as me, but I’m still no closer to finding him. What did I think was gonna happen – I could give the doctor a note to pass to him for me?’

‘It’ll be like a meet-cute or something: grizzled assassin swapping one-liners with a superhero over their weird sexual anatomy.’ Sam uses a voice which is clearly supposed to sound like he’s narrating a trailer, and it’s oddly convincing, startles a laugh out of Steve.

Sam proffers something beige and savoury-smelling at him. ‘It’s a sausage roll – sausage wrapped in pastry, it’s mostly grease, probably hits all the nutritional food groups. It’ll help keep those abs as firm as usual, don’t worry.’

Steve inhales it, then a second, then a third, pauses to drink his cup of coffee in one, wipes his mouth and looks up at Sam. ‘What?’

‘I’ve seen you eat before but even by your standards that was _disgusting_. Like a human-shaped garbage disposal.’

Steve laughs again, slows down for the fourth pastry, slumps down on the couch. ‘I’m not used to being sick again. So ironic, I spent my first 20 odd years being ill every day, and I forgot most of all how boring it is. They never tell you that about chronic illness. Sure there’s the adrenaline highs of nearly dying, but mostly there’s a lot of sitting around feeling terrible, and speaking with doctors, and taking disgusting tasting medicine. I just want to feel well again. And it tears me up to know Buck’s out there doing this alone.’

‘Can’t you sniff him out or something?’

Steve looks at Sam curiously, ‘Have you been reading dubious alpha/omega pamphlets?’

‘Yeah, a little,’ Sam shrugs. ‘I mean, even I can tell some of it’s bullshit but I wondered if there was the odd grain of truth. Mind-reading and stuff.’ 

‘I always used to joke that I could read Bucky’s mind, but I think I just knew him really well, that’s all.’ Sighs, feels maudlin, picks at a hangnail. ‘I feel useless sitting around like this.’

‘You’re both seeing the same physician, in the same part of town. I think you’ll find your way back to each other,’ Sam says, simply.

‘I hope you’re right,’ Steve says.

*** 

Steve goes back to the doctor as promised, tells him his heats are still going.

The doctor frowns over his hormone levels, ‘You should have gone back to baseline by now, but you’re still cycling. I’m going to try you on suppressants, but I have a feeling they won’t work. Have you seen your omega friend?’

‘No,’ Steve says, shortly, still stinging over his inability to find Bucky.

‘I think your body presumes you will, soon, it’s getting you ready.’

‘I’m tired of it, doc, I just want to go back to active duty.’

‘It’s not really your choice.’ Doctor MacGregor’s tone is even, his face kind. ‘Now, let me take your blood pressure, see how that’s doing.’

When the doctor leans in, is when Steve smells Bucky. It’s as if every other sense in his body has vanished, and all he can feel is _Bucky_ , tastes him on the air. He doesn’t come back to himself until he realizes that the doctor has gone very still, that Steve has his face pressed into his jacket sleeve.

Steve unpeels himself, sits back, mortified.

The doctor understands immediately. ‘I’m very stupid,’ he says, removing his jacket. ‘I see so few omegas now that I forgot to change my clothes. I apologise.’

‘He’s seeing you, isn’t he? Is he here now?’ Steve forces himself to speak slowly, to sound calm. 

‘You know I can’t break patient confidentiality,’ he sighs. ‘But,’ he puffs out a breath of air like a quick sigh, as if he’s steeling himself, ‘yes, he is. Well, I presume there’s not more than one male omega in London right now, an American like yourself.’

‘Is he doing okay?’

‘He’s doing about as well as you are. Hormones out of control, heats exhausting him. I couldn’t tell you where he is even if I wanted to – everything is off the record.’

‘But he was here today?’

‘He was here today.’

Steve’s heart feels like it’s skipped a beat for the first time since before the serum, feels breathless and helpless and hopeful.

‘Do you think he wants to see me?’

‘I don’t know, only he can tell you that,’ the doctor fiddles with his cuffs, awkward suddenly. He writes out a prescription, ‘the pharmacy can give you these. I’m not convinced they’ll work, but I think there is no harm in trying at least.’ 

The pills from the pharmacist are small, round, blue, unlike any suppressants he has taken before. He shakes the jar, frowns, wonders if they really will help, wonders if time is running out, if S.H.I.E.L.D. will be sick of him soon, call him back home.

He’s leaving the hospital, hands in his pockets, fist clenched around the jar, when he sees him in the distance. Bucky. He smells him first, which seems crazy given he’s the other side of the carpark, but Bucky must be able to scent him too – lifts his head, stares back at Steve. He’s glad he can smell him, would think he was dreaming otherwise.

Steve is prepared for him to run, and while every instinct in Steve’s body – alpha and otherwise – makes him want to chase, he forces himself to remain still, to calmly walk towards Bucky, to see what he is going to do.

There is no grand theatrical moment, no showdown on the top of the Shard, no epic cat and mouse game. Just Bucky standing still, watching Steve walk towards him as if Steve is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen, as if he can’t take his eyes off him. Bucky leans against the wall, the picture of casual, his left hand in his pocket, his hair tied back. Waiting.

Steve searches his face for Bucky. He's wearing an army surplus jacket, smudges of black under his eyes and stubble grazing hollowed cheekbones. He looks terrible, but he also looks like the best thing Steve has ever seen, like a mirage in the desert, can’t quite believe he’s real.

'I've been looking for you,' Steve says.

‘You found me,’ Bucky says. He closes his eyes, inhales deeply. ‘You smell good.’

‘I’m cycling,’ Steve says, simply, making no attempt to get closer to Bucky, letting him set the pace. ‘I keep going into heat. The doctor thinks it’s because of how I feel about you.’ There’s no point pretending, he decides, not when Bucky’s close enough to touch. ‘Why did you run?’

‘I had to,’ Bucky says, then he hesitates, shakes his head. ‘I thought I had to.’

‘Are you going to run again?’ Steve can taste his pulse in his throat, averts his eyes from Bucky’s so the question feels less weighted.

‘I might,’ Bucky admits. ‘I want to. But I don’t know if I can run from this. I don’t think I can run from you.’

‘No,’ Steve agrees. ‘We can’t escape each other.’

‘I don’t think there’s a happy ending for us,’ Bucky warns, suddenly, but there’s no heat in his voice, like he’s saying the words because he feels he has to rather than because he means it.

‘Maybe we get to make our own ending,’ Steve says, hesitantly. Imagines his life – missions, recon, endless briefings – but with Bucky as a constant. He sees his world in sepia tones since he came back to life. His past is all technicolour, bright and loud. The present day holds little appeal for him. But. With the knowledge that Bucky is alive, that Steve can have him, even if he’s hidden away, he pictures it like someone turning up a dimmer switch, casting light into every corner.

‘Do you want to come back to my place?’ Bucky says, holds Steve’s gaze in a way which feels both challenging and intimate.

‘You’re in pre-heat,’ Steve says. ‘Do you think that’s wise?’

Bucky smiles, and it’s that old cocky grin which Steve remembers so well. ‘Maybe I don’t want to be wise, Rogers, you ever think of that? And hey, so are you, who says you’ll be the one taking advantage?’

Steve suddenly pictures Bucky taking advantage of him and Bucky leans back, closes his eyes, ‘It’s weird, I can taste you on the air now, I never could before. It’s sorta intoxicating.’ He opens his eyes, blinks, shakes his head as if to clear it. ‘But I don’t think you or I will do anything we don’t want to do. I just want to talk. Get some stuff straight in my head.’

Steve doesn’t really want to talk. He wants to wrap Bucky up in a blanket, bring him tea and cake, and ice wrapped in flannels, and use his hands to rub away the dark circles under his eyes. But he nods instead, shakes away his hormones.

‘Sure, whatever you want.’ He falls into step with Bucky, who walks them to the bus stop, ushers Steve on, shows him how to pay his fare. He’s being solicitous, careful with him, Steve thinks, wonders how this will play out.

Bucky’s block is nowhere near as nice as Steve’s is, but he feels like he could follow Bucky anywhere: they’ve definitely been worse places, after all.

He tries to resist putting a guiding hand on Bucky’s elbow, steering him with the weight of his hand in the small of Bucky’s back. Doesn’t know where a thing is in Bucky’s flat but wants to make him a drink, something about how pale Bucky is tugging on him, something about his scent slipping beneath Steve’s skin.

At his third attempt at hovering by Bucky’s shoulder Bucky turns around, pushes him away. ‘You don’t need to fuss over me, I’m okay,’ he says. ‘I’ve always been the one to protect you, that's always been _my_ role.' He shrugs, lips twisted in a wry smile. 'Well, it used to be anyway, before you started rippling your way through every shirt anyone bought you.'

'You always had a smart mouth on you,' Steve forces himself to step back, to let Bucky lead the way to his little balcony, companionably pull out a chair as if this is totally ordinary, not only the second time they have met since the river, since Bucky pulled him from the water.

‘You always liked my smart mouth,’ Bucky says.

'No past tense. I still like it.'

The silence stretches until, 'You ever wish you didn't have to remember?' Bucky says, leaning in intently. 

Steve pauses then, thinks about the traffic, the clothes, the iPhones and Starbucks and little yappy dogs.

'Yes,' he says. 

'Huh.' Bucky sits back. 'I woulda bet money that you were going to say no. I bet you love reminiscing, drive everyone crazy complaining that it's ten-fucken-dollars for a burger now, that you can't order a black coffee you’ve got to ask for all this other stuff to go with it.'

'Yeah,' Steve smiles. He fiddles with his sleeve, fights the ridiculous urge to leap the table and smell Bucky, start crying into his collar which always used to stink of bryl cream and cheap cologne. Bucky would clap his back in a macho way at first but then give in and rub small circles between his shoulder blades. He'd done it when Steve's dad was declared KIA, and when his ma died, before Steve learned not to cry, to be stoic instead. Steve clicks his fingers, 'just like that, my world is gone. Everyone I ever knew dead. I lost everything,' he says, finally. 

Bucky puts his hand under Steve's chin, raises his face so he can't avoid that familiar gaze, more haunted than he remembers but still the same dark eyes and clever mouth. His stomach twists. 'You didn't lose everything,’ Bucky says. And Bucky leans in, and kisses him.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Boys weren’t omegas. Not outside of blue movies, or bluer songs, at least, the kind of anecdotes too ribald even for soldiers to tell. Girls were omegas, sometimes, but rarely, even in those days. Dying breeds, he guessed. When he was the asset it had stopped entirely, he had thought it all over: feels sick thinking of what they would have done to exploit him if he had suffered back then. But now, 2014, eating three meals a day, sleeping regularly in a safe bed, the old ghost has come back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Write the a/b/o fic you want to see in the world. Set after The Winter Soldier.
> 
> The title comes from Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse. I know where this is going and it's going to be an epic route to a happy ending - one more chapter after this, I think!
> 
> Bucky POV this chapter, and, um, it's pretty dirty. Finally.

Bucky hates the fact he is cycling, hates the fact that he has to book a week off work – only gets away with it because Beth, his co-worker, wants to sleep with him so covers his shifts – hates the fact that he can’t fight this the way he can fight Hydra.

Bucky’s body has never felt like it’s his own. The bitter irony of his life is now, free from Hydra, free from stasis, and assassinations, and mind control, he’s just as helpless as he ever was. Only his treacherous biology is to blame.

He feels sorry for himself a lot right now, then chastens himself for the self-pity, busies himself with his notebooks, with researching what he’s done, the bad things the Winter Soldier did, obsesses over finding List, finding Fletcher, making them pay in some way – hates the idea that they can live an ordinary life, untroubled by guilt, continuing to plot their godawful schemes. He doesn’t kill any more, no matter how much he wants to, but that doesn’t mean he can’t daydream a little about breaking arms and shattering knees, but because he wants to, because it’s right, not because someone else told him to.

Bucky’s nesting. He thinks it’s the most embarrassing word to describe what he’s doing, but it’s the only word that works. After years on the run, homeless shelters and sleeping bags in doorways, squatting in abandoned warehouses, not even flinching when rats ran across his legs in the night – he’s buying pillows and blankets. Apparently it’s a normal stage of heat, Bucky is led to believe by old encyclopaedia articles, when really what it is is fucken mortifying, stringing up fairy-lights, filling his fridge with sugary foods and drinks.

His bed is covered in throws now, he has to push pillows on the floor before he gets in it, wonders what’s wrong with him, why he’s caring so much about this kind of crap, who exactly his body thinks is going to even _see_ it. Bucky lives alone. He has no friends. But his stupid omega body doesn’t seem to understand that.

He texts Doctor MacGregor from his burner phone eventually, and the good doctor calls him within thirty minutes, wry amusement apparent in his tone, even as he obviously tries to choke it down.

‘Your body wants you to be comfortable, and it’s expecting a visitor for your heat,’ he explains, patiently.

‘My body is being pretty goddamn presumptuous,’ Bucky sputters.

‘Not planning to see your alpha friend, I take it?’

‘No,’ Bucky sounds mutinous. ‘Though obviously any free will I think I have has been totally overridden by my hormones, so who knows, maybe I’ll invite him over without even knowing.’

‘Stop that,’ the doctor’s voice is like a rap on his knuckles. ‘If buying the occasional comfortable thing is the worst your body does, it’s hardly too bad. We’ve talked about the rest. You won’t beg for someone to have sex with you, you won’t desire someone you wouldn’t otherwise be attracted to. Just ride it out. I know it’s bloody uncomfortable,’ the soft Scottish burr is more pronounced when he swears, Bucky notices, ‘but it’ll be over soon. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ Bucky says, chastened, hangs up the phone and goes to lie on his (ridiculous) couch with its (numerous) pillows all laid out. 

Bucky’s never been much of a fan of fingering himself. Before the war he was scared of liking it, scared of how easy it was to make himself slick, skate his fingers over his hole, think about Steve fucking him. He’d stop himself, resolutely, tuck his hands between his thighs, knowing it wasn’t _right_ to get off like that, that he shouldn’t like it, shouldn’t want Steve that way.

Now it’s all he wants to do. Lies around his flat, doors and windows open, his own temperature spiking, on his back, heels to the bed, finger fucks himself open, thinks of Steve the whole time.

Before heat hits him fully he feels embarrassed afterwards, but during his heat itself, when his whole world narrows to a throbbing heat between his thighs, his dick heavy, there’s no mental space to feel embarrassed. He finds himself kneeling, imagining Steve holding his wrists down, fucking his mouth, or bending him over the table, or, sweetly, kissing him, taking care of him, making Bucky feel safe again in a way he hasn’t in decades.

It lasts five days this time, and it’s nothing like the mini-heats. It roars through him with an intensity he can’t quite believe, leaving him shattered and sore, muscles knotted and knees shaky. After years of surviving on protein shakes his body shouldn’t be fussy, but he finds all he wants now is ice cream and cake, pastries and orange juice. Drinks gallons of Lucozade, no matter how disgusting he finds the taste.

He wishes Steve was with him, not just for the obvious reason, but so someone can take care of him, make him feel better. He always was lousy at being sick, not like Steve who took it with a stoicism which far outstripped his size. 

When it’s over, at last, when he puts the vibrator away, showers, and showers, and showers, again, when he eats everything he can get his hands on and can stand without falling, then he calls the doctor, who arranges for him to come in.

There is something extremely soothing about being in the presence of another omega, Bucky thinks, registering Doctor MacGregor’s scent, the way it makes him think of his ma, of comforting nights tucked up in bed, kisses on his forehead.

There’s not so much soothing about his words, though, as he runs the gamut of tests. ‘You’re still cycling,’ he frowns. ‘I thought a heat would bring your hormones down and, it has, but not nearly as much as I had hoped it would. I think you’re going to go into heat again.’

‘Again, doc?’ he sounds helpless. ‘As bad as before?’

‘I can’t say for sure, I’ve only been treating you for a week or so,’ he shakes his head, pulls a book off his shelf, thumbs through it. ‘There’s so little literature on male omegas, and any there is… is extremely outdated. I can only posit that you’ve formed an attachment to someone, and you’re going to keep cycling either until you act on the attachment, or until I can find a suppressant to stop it. Of course it might not be that at all, it might just be a body getting used to being without artificial hormones for the first time in your life.’

He pushes the book over to Bucky, taps the page, ‘It’s a case study of a young female omega and a male alpha, but similar happened with their heat. It’s why I was always told how dangerous it was to be around alphas, in case I became too attached to them. Though,’ he looks off into the distance, ‘I never found an alpha attractive until Toby, found them all far too posturing.’

Bucky reads the book, takes in the archaic language, sighs deeply and can’t resist burying his head on the table then. He wants Doctor MacGregor to stroke his hair, tell him it is all going to be okay, but of course it would be unprofessional for the doctor to do so.

‘All you can do is go home, keep hydrating, and come back and see me in three days, we’ll see if your levels have dropped by then, okay?’

Bucky nods, reluctantly, feels tired to the marrow of his bones, too tired to run, to do anything except listen, and obey. It’s not so different to before.

He registers Black Widow before she notices him, lounging against the hospital café wall in a way which might appear casual if you didn't know she knew an inordinate number of ways to kill a man. She’s watching someone, Bucky follows her eyeline to List, outside the café, dapper in a suit and tie, a consultant here, obviously, talking to Fletcher. His fist clenches – his metal fist – and oddly the feeling of the plates moving, which should make him angrier, almost shocks him back to life.

Hood up, into the pharmacy, watching the exit to the cafeteria, waiting until List and Fletcher move out, relaxed and jovial in a way which means they have no idea they are being followed. Natasha exits after, and he falls into step behind her, knows as soon as she realizes: he can feel her considering glance from the corner of her eye, watches her hesitate over her feet. From what he’s read, Natasha never hesitates. 

'Let's not do this in public,' she says, finally. 'Barnes, in front of me, hands where I can see them.'

Bucky lets it happen, walks towards the elevator, both hands out of his pockets to show he has no weapons. Which is sort of funny given that his entire left arm is a weapon. She presses the button, checks both ways, indicates him to go ahead of her.

'I remember what I did to you,' Bucky says slowly and deliberately, to try and tell her that he is not the asset, that he can summon his past now. 'I shot you in the stomach, through the stomach to be exact, and left you to bleed out.' 

'You did,' she agrees, leaning past him to press the button for the ground floor. 'I wasn't your target so you didn't kill me. I was collateral.'

‘You’re acting pretty friendly for someone I shot.’

‘Well that’s sort of a theme for you, isn’t it? Steve just wants to make nice, tells us you’re better now. That you were just following orders.'

Bucky laughs, 'He’s gonna use that excuse for me? After what we fought for?'

'You were tortured and had your mind wiped. You had little understanding of what you were doing. I experienced only a fraction of what you did and it left me broken.’ Her voice is monotone, and she doesn’t make eye contact, ignores him in favour of texting. 

‘You telling Steve where I am?’ He’s not sure how he feels, whether he wants Steve to know, if he wants Steve to find him again, thinks he does, but can’t be sure. She ignores him. 

The doors ping open, a group of student doctors push in, chatting and laughing. Natasha pulls Bucky back to the recesses of the lift. ‘I don’t know where’s safe to take you,’ she says, quietly. ‘I don’t want your address traceable… in case.’

‘There’s a coffee shop in Denmark Hill, a Costa, we’re not being followed.’

She considers him, his jaw-length hair pulled back, his cap, his sweater and jeans. ‘You look different.’

‘Not like a killer, you mean?’

‘Sure,’ she shrugs. ‘Just not really a threat. You look tired, mostly.’

The lift doors open, and the students rush off, still gossiping as they go.

‘I don’t remember ever being that young,’ Bucky says.

‘You weren’t ever that young,’ Natasha replies. ‘Neither was I.’

*** 

It’s strange to be sat in a coffee shop opposite one of the avengers. He feels like he’s going to be interrogated, but she buys him a pot of earl grey first, a slice of cake. ‘You feeling okay?’

He flushes, wonders how much Steve has told her. ‘I’m fine,’ he says, stiffly, forces himself to eat the cake slowly.

‘It’s pretty crazy shooting the shit with the winter soldier, in this den of capitalism,’ she gestures to the rows of syrups, the smiling workers. 

‘I’m not the winter soldier,’ he puts his fork down, lifts his cap off to push his hair back, to give his hands something to do. ‘I’m just a man, now. A tired man: I’ve seen too much.’

‘You sound like Rogers.’

‘You take that back,’ he teases, and she laughs, almost despite herself, as if she’s surprised.

‘I didn’t expect you to be funny.’

‘I was always the funny one,’ he shrugs. ‘Before everything happened. I was the joker, the one to tease Steve into blushing, the one who made wisecracks on every march.’ Maybe he could learn to be the funny one again.

Sam – Falcon – walks through the door then, stiffens when he sees Bucky. Bucky sits back in his chair, forces himself to look relaxed, figures Natasha wanted back-up. Sam looks more unnerved than Bucky does. He squares his shoulders, pulls out the chair next to Natasha’s.

‘You want to sound out my intentions, is that it?’ Bucky asks her, gesturing to Sam. ‘Because the way I see it – I ran, I disappeared. It’s Rogers who won’t let me stay dead.’

‘Hmm,’ she looks out of the window instead of facing him. ‘If you want him to leave you alone, he will. He won’t like it, but he will. But what are you running from, really?’

He considers the question, rolls it around in his mind, that nagging feeling that maybe he should stop running, maybe he doesn’t really know what he’s trying to escape. 

‘I don’t want to drag Steve down with me,’ Bucky says, finally. He doesn’t. He doesn’t want to damage Steve. Steve has suffered enough. ‘And, selfishly, I can’t go to prison again, I can’t, if they even gave me that, if they didn’t just put me down like a dog.’ He remembers being called _good dog_ once, by laughing soldiers, thrown a biscuit. He doesn’t remember the context. Doesn’t want to remember.

‘We have a plan,’ Sam says. ‘Steve trusts you, you’ve not done anything in years, we know you’re watching Hydra, so… We have an idea.’

‘ _I_ had an idea,’ Natasha interjects. ‘No stealing credit,’ she flicks a crumb at Sam and his jaw relaxes, he sighs. ‘You remember Fury?’

‘I killed him,’ Bucky says. Remembers flashes, before he was wiped again.

‘You tried to kill him,’ Sam says. ‘He survived. He’s ‘dead’ officially but we still answer to him, as much as we answer to anyone. He works… outside the rules, shall we say?’

Bucky fails to follow where this is going, but before he can speak, Natasha holds up a quelling hand. ‘We make you the second Captain America,’ she says.

Bucky has no idea what to say, how to react. ‘What?’ 

‘We go to Fury, you’ll be debriefed,’ she carries on as if he hasn’t said anything. ‘No one else needs know you’re alive, you’ll wear the mask, carry the shield, and that’ll be enough.’

His mouth is dry, he picks up his mug, cradles it, mind racing. ‘You think it’d work?’

‘Look, very few people knew about the winter soldier, or your real identity. Fury’s dead, as far as anyone knows. To be honest… the only people really looking for you still is us. You can have a life again, a cover.’

‘And Steve?’ 

‘You can have Steve,’ her voice is soft, gentle, she holds his gaze. ‘And he gets some privacy, a chance to be Steve, not always Captain America.’

‘I did some real bad things,’ he says, slowly.

‘I did too,’ she meets his gaze coolly.

‘It could be your way to put things right,’ Sam interrupts. ‘To atone for your past. You’re already doing that in a way, I know, I figure that’s important to you – fighting to put things right.’

‘I don’t want to be a weapon of the state,’ Bucky says. ‘I won’t do it unless I have autonomy.’ But he’s already thinking about it, already imagining what that would be like, to fight under Captain America’s shield, to destroy Hydra, to be one of the good guys, unofficially at least.

He imagines what it would be like to have Steve. He pictures it: a small apartment somewhere which Steve can visit, or hotel rooms, holidays, greedily getting to see Steve whenever he wants to, being able to reach out and touch him and be able to let himself. Maybe he’s being stupid to think that Natasha and Sam, and Nick Fury, can keep him safe, but maybe they’re right, maybe he can have a life again, some sort of life.

‘If we can give you autonomy? Our protection?’

‘I’ll think about it,’ he says, slowly. ‘I need to talk to Steve.’

‘He’s at the hospital too,’ Sam says.

‘He’s sick?’ Bucky asks, immediately, that tell-tale old fear he used to have, of Steve and hospitals.

‘He stopped taking suppressants,’ Natasha says, matter of fact. ‘He’ll be here until the doctor can figure it out. Do you want to call him?’

‘It’s not really a subject for a call, is it?’ Bucky deadpans. 

‘No,’ she agrees. 

‘And I don’t want to see him when I’m like this. I’m no good to anyone. I can’t fight List, I can’t do much of anything.’

‘I’ve got List, give me another day and he’ll be mine.’ 

He’s inclined to believe her. ‘Fletcher is another, the man he was with,’ Bucky tells her, voice low and urgent. ‘He was one of the men who cared for me.’ He doesn’t mean ‘cared for’, of course. There was no care about it, no kindness. Natasha knows that.

‘I’ve been watching him too, waiting for them to get sloppy. I don’t want anything happening on hospital grounds, nothing which ties me here, ties Steve here. He doesn’t want any questions.’

‘I only learned about all this alpha crap about a week ago,’ Sam says. ‘But Steve wants it secret, I’ll go along with that. We’ll take care of this.’

‘Hmm,’ Bucky feels that frustration again, the surge of anger that right now he’s helpless. At the whims of his body. He stands up, pulls his coat around him, cap low. ‘I appreciate the talk, both of you. I’ve got a lot to think about.’

*** 

He’s been thinking about Steve his whole life, it feels like. Since the moment they met. Worrying for him, loving him, desiring him, fearing him. It’s all tied up in being omega. Or, in how he feels about being omega. His secret fear is being useless, being a ball and chain round Steve’s ankle, Steve dragged down to his level. Or being something they can use against him. Lets himself picture having a family with Steve, sticky-faced babies, toddlers with Steve’s eyes, his bony elbows. Imagines what would happen if anyone found out. The world might not be the world he grew up in, but omegas are still seen as submissive, clingy, hypersexualized, desperate. He doesn’t feel like any of those things, right now at least. 

If he goes to Steve it feels like surrender, but he’s been wanting to surrender to Steve for as long as he can remember. He thinks about what the doctor has told him, that being omega is part of him, but it’s not all of him. That he has choices, free will, that his feelings for Steve came before knowing he was alpha, that maybe part of it is tied up in biology, but not all, and that’s okay.

He’s in the stage of pre-heat where his mind still feels clear. Where he lets himself picture Steve taking care of him, and Bucky letting him. 

He goes to his cupboard, pulls out a stack of notebooks labelled BEFORE, the notebook he avoids rereading more than others, for the wave of painful nostalgia that always threatens to drown him. Steve, feet like ice, tucking them between his calves until Bucky shouted, threatening to push him on the floor. Picking bedbugs off the mattress, throwing them in a bucket of boiling water, Steve complaining that it was cruel and Bucky saying ‘the only one who gets to bite you is me’, just for the pleasure of watching Steve flush rosy pink all over. Steve in his arms, letting Bucky dance with him, Bucky counting out the beats in his ear, telling Steve to relax, to let Bucky lead, Steve laying his head on Bucky’s shoulder, his heart fluttering against Bucky’s chest, his hand shaking in Bucky’s.

He doesn’t mean to cry, it just happens, taking it in, allowing himself to wallow in the past, to consider it, to imagine the memories he could make with Steve – good memories, new memories, to replace those notebooks of kills, of mind control, of darkness. 

*** 

He goes to the hospital, as planned, even though he’s wrung out from another heat which swept through him, left him gasping and jerking off mindlessly, on his hands and knees with a dildo in his ass, baring his neck to nobody, thinking about Steve the whole time. He doesn’t let himself feel ashamed afterwards. He doesn’t let himself feel guilty about wanting Steve, not this time.

The doctor is as calming as ever, muted voice and familiar scent. Bucky is used to the examination by now, strips off easily, has never had a doctor (anyone) be solicitous over his examinations before, careful not to hurt Bucky, not to startle him.

‘You’re not back at base rate,’ the doctor says, after scrolling through what looks like pages of numbers and percentages from the saliva and blood tests. 

‘But I’ve had two heats now,’ he doesn’t even sound exasperated any more, or surprised, he’s slowly accepting the reason why. 

‘Yes,’ the doctor agrees, frowning. ‘My theory about forming an attachment-’

‘You’re right,’ Bucky says, simply. 

The doctor looks startled. ‘I didn’t think you’d accept that diagnosis, I know how you feel about being omega.’

‘The way I feel about him isn’t about being omega, though,’ Bucky says, slowly, feeling his way through the words. ‘I have to accept that. Sure, parts of it are tied up in it, how could it not be – I am omega, it’s part of me. But there’s a lotta other parts of me too, doc.’

Doctor MacGregor quirks an eyebrow at that. ‘So you have actually been listening to what I’ve been saying?’ His tone is sardonic and Bucky flushes.

‘I’m a stubborn asshole, I know,’ he says, weakly.

‘You’ve spent your whole life hiding from what you are,’ the doctor says. ‘It will take time to accept it. But being omega doesn’t make you less-than. It doesn’t need to dictate your life, to change your decisions.’

‘I love him,’ Bucky says, simply, maybe lulled by the scent of the doctor into admitting more than he should. ‘I can smell him here, on you, I can feel it like a throb in my spine.’

‘Of course,’ the doctor closes his eyes, sighs. ‘Of course it’s not coincidence, two of you here like this.’

‘I want to see him again,’ Bucky says.

‘He wants to see you again,’ the doctor says.

‘I know.’ Bucky’s statement isn’t arrogant, just, understanding, finally dawning. That there are some things you don’t outrun, some things you can’t escape no matter where you go, because they’re deep inside you, inside your blood. 

‘I can’t give you his address,’ the doctor says, furtive suddenly. ‘But. I can tell you I am seeing him today. That perhaps if you were near the hospital for the next hour or so, your paths might cross.’ He appears faintly embarrassed, ‘I shouldn’t meddle, I know, but,’ he rests his hand on Bucky’s briefly, ‘you remind me of me, in many ways.’

Bucky squeezes the doctor’s fingers. ‘Thank you.’

‘Will I see you for your appointment next week?’ The doctor looks resigned, as if he expects the answer to be no.

‘I’m not running any more,’ Bucky says, getting up. ‘I’ve got things to finish.’ 

*** 

He waits for Steve for two hours, picks a spot overlooking the carpark, remembers what it’s like to be a sniper, the hours of stillness, so everything else falls away until it’s just you, and your target. He spots him a mile away, of course he does, even with that stupid hat, and that stupider beard, he’s unmistakable. He notices Bucky slower, and then it’s like all his attention, everything in him, is aware of him, desperate for Bucky – can see Steve struggling to be slow, struggling not to spook him, not to make him run again.

Bucky doesn’t remember what he says, not exactly, too busy taking in Steve’s beloved face, the scent of him thick in the air, the way his body responds to Steve’s presence. He leads him home, lets him into his flat, out onto the balcony, where the cold air, the breeze, clears Steve’s scent a little, makes it easier to think.  
He keeps looking at Steve’s mouth, at his eyes, not sure if he wants to kiss him or talk to him, or just hug him, tell him he’s okay now, that he believes in Steve, that he believes they can try and build something together, somewhere. That he’ll fight for that.

He doesn’t quite know how to say that yet, though, so he leans in, instead, kisses Steve’s mouth, so familiar under his, even after all these years. Steve is hesitant at first, lets Bucky cup his jaw, kiss him softly, opens his mouth, sighs into Bucky’s. Bucky licks his bottom lip, slowly, and then maybe it’s the alpha in Steve awaking, or maybe it’s just _Steve_ , just that scrappy little kid from Brooklyn, always having to get the last word, and Steve’s hand is in his hair suddenly, not pulling, just holding, sucking Bucky’s tongue until Bucky moans, pulls back, panting.

Steve looks stricken. ‘Was that,’ he starts, then stops. ‘Was that okay? Was I okay? Too much? Why did you find me? Why did you change your mind?’

Bucky laughs, then. ‘You wait until my tongue’s in your mouth to start asking all the difficult questions, pal?’

Steve laughs, looks younger as he does it, like all those lines suddenly relax at once. ‘I want to make sure it’s what you want. I know I don’t always make the best decisions when it comes to you, Buck, I never have.’

‘I saw Natasha and Sam,’ Bucky says, forcing himself to sit back in his chair, away from Steve, trying to get his pulse under control.

‘Oh,’ Steve says, cautious.

‘They told me about their idea. Fury, Captain America the second… That we could… be together. That no one needs know. That they’d help hide me.’

‘I think it could work,’ Steve’s tone is pleading. ‘And if you don’t want to, we’ll help hide you anyway. I just couldn’t let things end like they did in Brooklyn, Bucky. I couldn’t let that be the last time I saw you. To fall asleep with you in my arms and wake up alone.’ He looks out across the courtyard, his jaw tight. ‘It’s more than I could bear.’

‘So you’d let me go, if I said that’s what I wanted?’ Bucky asks.

Steve gives Bucky his most Captain America stare. Bucky’s seen it before, on countless bits of propaganda, but it’s rare for it to be turned on him. He’s not quite prepared for its power, up close. ‘I’d let you go.’

‘And if I said that’s not what I wanted, if I said I wanted to be with you, in every way, to mate with you,’ he flushes, the role of the coquette not natural to him even with the feel of Steve’s mouth still hot on his skin. ‘What would you say then?’

Steve gets out of his seat, as if he can’t believe what he’s hearing, kneels in front of Bucky, his hands on Bucky’s thighs. He bares his neck, lowers his eyes. Bucky recognizes the gesture, immediately, from all of the reading he has been doing about his condition. It’s an old-fashioned gesture, a sexual invitation, but it’s supposed to be from an omega to an alpha, not the other way around. But Steve must know that, must have made the decision to do this to show Bucky that it doesn’t have to be that way between them, that they can decide what’s alpha, what’s omega – what’s Bucky, what’s Steve. Bucky sinks to his knees too, puts his fingers under Steve’s chin until he looks up at him, kisses him chastely on the mouth. 

‘The doctor says if we have sex, our hormones will revert to base rate,’ Bucky says.

Steve’s face falls, he looks down again, clears his throat. ‘So, that’s why you want to do it? For our hormones?’

‘No, no,’ Bucky stumbles over the words in his haste to explain. ‘I want to be with you because I love you, and I desire you. God, Steve Rogers, I’ve wanted you to fuck me since I was sixteen years old.’

Steve looks up, shyly, as if hearing those words is more romantic than any sonnet ever written, anything Ella ever sung. ‘Really?’

‘I was just scared, for a long time, about what admitting that would mean. What that would make me. Boys aren’t omegas, are they? I didn’t know what I was supposed to be.’

‘You’re just you, Buck. You were made for me.’

Bucky stands, offers Steve his hand, pulls him up. ‘I don’t think we should give your neighbours a show,’ Steve says, very seriously. The tips of his ears are red.

‘No,’ Bucky agrees, grins at Steve, a smile he’d forgotten how to do – the devil-may-care one that says he’s thinking about undressing you. The redness from Steve’s ears starts to spread down. Bucky wonders how far down it goes, is eager to find out. He wonders if he’s going into heat again, if that’s why he feels so intoxicated, but no, not yet, soon but not yet. He’s just very aware of Steve, of how close he is, how close his bedroom is, as he pulls Steve through the doorway.

‘You have a lot of pillows,’ Steve says, when he takes in Bucky’s bed. 

‘I’m nesting,’ Bucky says, with a wry grin. ‘Preparing my home for an alpha to come and take me, help me through my heat.’

‘Any old alpha will do?’ Steve asks, his voice thick, his hands suddenly on Bucky’s waist, the smell of him everywhere. 

‘Just you,’ Bucky pushes Steve’s shirt up, wanting skin. ‘It’s always been just you.’

They kiss again, eager despite the irritations of Steve’s beard, the layers of clothes between them. Bucky pulls back, dizzy for oxygen, drunk on the scent of Steve, the feel of him.

‘Can I-’ Steve breaks off, embarrassed suddenly.

‘Can you?’ Bucky’s aware that his face must be red raw from Steve’s stubble, his lips swollen, but Steve’s looking at him like he’s never wanted anything more.

‘It’s silly,’ Steve’s embarrassed. ‘I just, I want to carry you to bed.’

Bucky wants to laugh, wants to whack Steve on the arm and ask him who he thinks he is, what is he doing acting like he’s some dashing bridegroom and Bucky’s the blushing maiden. That he has two legs. He can walk. But instead what he says is, ‘please’, and he clasps his hands solemnly round Steve’s neck, lets Steve lift him, settle him against his chest, walk them to the bed where Steve lays him down, carefully, so carefully. Like Bucky’s made of porcelain. 

‘You’re going into heat,’ Steve tells him, like he doesn’t already know. 

‘Not yet,’ he says, and then, ‘and you are too.’ Because he doesn’t want Steve to think he has the upper hand.

‘I don’t want our first time to be when you’re on heat,’ Steve says. ‘I want you to want it because it’s me, because we’re together, I want us to remember it.’

‘Then you’d better hurry up,’ Bucky says, Steve’s gaze on him reminding him how to do this, how to be seductive, to be in his body, to feel it, to let it feel pleasure, for that to be okay. Bucky undresses himself, boots and shirt, glove, t-shirt, watches Steve watch him unbuckle his belt, feels Steve’s arousal spike, enjoys the dramatic sound the leather makes as he pulls it free. Jeans next, briefs, and there: naked, bare, waiting for Steve, who’s still standing there like an idiot just looking down at the bed.

‘I want you to be sure,’ Steve says.

‘I am sure, you bozo,’ Bucky says. ‘Stop being so noble about it, I’ve done my soul-searching, cried my tears. I just want you to fuck me, and to take care of me, and to let me fuck you, and take care of you.’ He makes it sound simple, and it is, really, it is simple, he tells himself. He doesn’t have to worry about every single bad thing that could happen. He’s safe, right now. No one knows where they are, no one can hurt them, he’s with Steve, he can have this, it’s okay to have something good in his life.

Steve nods, once, and then he’s undressing, almost stumbling over his clothes, kneeling over Bucky, his erection against Bucky’s thigh. Bucky feels weak with it, the smell of Steve, his arousal, his dick heavy on Bucky’s thigh. He pulls Steve down, twines his hands around Steve’s neck, kisses his mouth greedily, sucking his tongue, biting his lower lip, feeling Steve moan, grind his dick into Bucky, feels it leaking against him.

‘I’ve wanted this for so long,’ Steve says. ‘But I never wanted to pressure you, never wanted you to feel you had to, to do it out of pity, because no one else would.’

‘Everyone else was an idiot if they couldn’t see what I see,’ he kisses along Steve’s jaw, down his neck, sucks a mark on his throat. ‘I always wanted you, but I was too scared, too scared of what it meant. But, I know now, it’s okay to want this, I can still be me and want this.’

Steve pushes Bucky down, licks along his skin, where his arm meets his body, where the scar tissue is. It feels different, but he likes it, likes the feeling of Steve worshipping him. Likes that his body doesn’t feel like a weapon right now, it doesn’t feel like an omega body – it feels like _his_ body, his omega body, his choice.

Bucky lets his knees fall open as Steve moves down the bed, Steve asks ‘may I?’ and there’s so much raw pleading in those two words, his pupils blown, that how can Bucky say no? How can Bucky deny him? Bucky rolls over, onto his hands and knees, looks at Steve over his shoulder with a look that he knows is wanton, his dick aching, his hole leaking slick all down his thighs. Steve moans, parts his ass, starts licking him, broad swipes of his tongue over his hole, around it, never in it until Bucky starts begging him, ‘please’ and ‘fuck’ and ‘Steve’ until Steve pushes his tongue inside Bucky. Bucky drops down to his elbows, his face pressed to the sheets, feeling speared on Steve’s tongue, his whole world reduced to the sensation. He feels needy, desperate for it, Steve’s tongue fluttering over his hole, inside him, it’s not enough.

‘Steve, Steve, I want to see you, I want to touch you,’ suddenly feels like Steve is too far away, that he wants him closer. Turns over, Steve is immediately on him, his tongue in Bucky’s mouth.

‘You taste so good, god, fuck, I could spend hours doing that, was it okay, was I, was I, I’ve never-’

Steve is incoherent, and Bucky just kisses him, tells him how good he is, how good he feels, how much Bucky wants to come, lets Steve rub his dick against Bucky’s, until Bucky’s writhing up against him, feels like he’s a teenager again, heavy petting in bed. 

‘I’ve never jerked off anyone but me before,’ Bucky says, suddenly, wanting to feel the weight of Steve’s dick in his hand, to touch him, to feel his knot swell up, to see him come all over Bucky, all over Bucky’s aching hole, inside him, to fill him up, to knot him, to satisfy him. He slides a hand down between them and Steve lies next to him, still licking at Bucky’s lower lip, biting it, sucking it. 

‘No one’s ever touched me before,’ Steve says, serious suddenly. ‘I didn’t want anyone to know what I was.’

Bucky touches Steve the way he touches himself, his hand loose, eases the foreskin up over the swollen head of Steve’s dick, wet with precome, down, slowly at first, ignores Steve’s knot because he doesn’t know quite what to do with it. Steve looks crazed with it, moaning, his head thrown back. ‘Fuck, Bucky, that feels,’ his sentences start but never finish, his cock leaking into Bucky’s hand. He reaches down for Bucky’s dick, matches Bucky’s pace, it feels too good, Bucky thinks.

‘Put your fingers inside me, I want to come,’ he says. Steve’s hand stills for a moment and then he reaches down, obediently, slides one finger in, slowly, right up to the knuckle. ‘More,’ Bucky asks, and Steve adds another, fucking him in time with his strokes of Bucky’s hard dick. Bucky’s hand is still now, can’t concentrate on touching Steve, all he can do is feel Steve’s fingers pushing in and out of him, the stretch of his hole, the swelling of his dick in Steve’s hand.

‘I’m going to come,’ he tells him, and Steve strokes faster, adds a third finger, fucks into Bucky over and over until Bucky can feel it, his balls drawing up, his dick swelling, until he starts shooting come onto Steve’s hand, over and over, Steve using it like lube, rubbing it into Bucky’s dick, down over his hole. Steve’s eyes keep moving between Bucky’s dick and Bucky’s face, like he doesn’t know where he wants to watch.

‘Fuck,’ Bucky keeps saying, over and over. ‘Fuck’ and ‘Steve’ and ‘yes’ and nothing else, pulls Steve down for a kiss, encourages Steve on top of him. He guides Steve’s dick to his, rubs the swollen head against his, uses his own come to slick Steve’s dick. Steve moans, looks scandalized, then lets his eyes flutter closed.

‘Do you want to fuck me?’ Bucky asks, and he feels shy as he says it, which is ridiculous given he’s had Steve’s tongue inside him, Steve’s fingers stretching him out, is covered in come.

‘Yes,’ Steve says. 

‘I have condoms in my top drawer,’ Bucky tells him. ‘I’m not on suppressants any more, don’t want you to knock me up.’

Steve laughs, bends to kiss him again, to bite his nipple, to stroke his hand down Bucky’s thigh, to rub the pit of his knee. His dick looks huge, Bucky wonders how it will fit, how the knot will possibly fit inside him, has read enough to know he’ll stretch out for it, he’ll be ready for it, but can’t quite believe it.

‘I’ve never done this,’ Steve fumbles over the condom, looks embarrassed, and Bucky sits up, helps, pinches the tip, rolls it down, over Steve’s knot, which isn’t up yet, won’t swell up until he’s inside Bucky, coming inside him. Bucky feels shivery all over, hot and yearning. ‘How do you want to-’ Steve’s awkward suddenly, embarrassed, shy even, and Bucky takes pity on him. 

‘Lie down, I want to ride you,’ he says. Steve closes his eyes, breathes deeply, lies down on the bed again, waits patiently for Bucky to straddle him. Steve’s heart is superhuman now, but Bucky knows it is racing, can taste Steve in the air, heavy in the back of his throat. He takes Steve’s hand, brings it to his lips, kisses his knuckles, then leans back, fingers himself open, lets his eyes shutter closed, focuses on how good it feels, on Steve’s sharp intakes of breath, his moans, his hands tight on Bucky’s hips.

‘I’m ready,’ Bucky says, kneeling up. ‘Are you ready?’

‘Yes, Buck, I want to feel you, I want to be inside you,’ Steve’s voice is fervent, worshipful, his thumbs stroking circles on Bucky’s hips, his eyes all over him.

The feel of the head of Steve’s dick is a blunt, hot pressure on Bucky’s hole. He’s so wet, though, covered in slick, all over his thighs, stretched open and ready. He slides down, slowly, his own dick throbbing, even though he’s just come.

‘Look at me,’ Steve tells him, and Bucky feels the alpha in his voice, meets his gaze obediently, sees the love, the lust, on Steve’s face. Bucky feels trapped in Steve’s eyes, only a thin edge of blue around his pupils left, the air full of their scent, mingling, their preheats combining. He feels heady with it, as he slowly takes all of Steve into him, until they’re joined. Steve lets him set the pace, won’t let him look away, reaches up and pulls Bucky’s hair down, so it’s framing his face.

‘You’re so beautiful, Buck,’ he says.

Bucky feels powerful, Steve’s stare a benediction, and he starts to ride him, greedy for the slide of Steve’s dick against his prostate, the pleasure building again. He jerks himself off fast, and Steve groans, does nothing more alpha than keep holding his hips tight, obviously resisting the urge to thrust up into him, letting Bucky set the pace. Bucky loves him for it, fucks himself on Steve’s cock, feels cared for and satisfied, like his body know that Steve will look after him, give him what he wants. 

Steve laid out beneath him is like every wet dream he’s ever denied – his body covered in a sheen of sweat, his moans, his gasps going straight to Bucky’s dick. ‘I want you to come for me,’ Steve says, and there’s that alpha again.

‘Say it again,’ he gasps, mindless with it, how big Steve is inside him, Steve’s eyes on his.

‘I want you to come for me, Bucky, now,’ Steve says again, and Bucky thrusts up into his own hand one more time, grinds down onto Steve until he can feel the edge of Steve’s knot, and he starts coming, hard, all over Steve’s stomach.

Steve is throbbing inside him, an aching length, and Bucky takes pity on him then, when his legs stop shaking enough he eases off Steve’s dick, gets on his hands and knees, presents, waits for Steve to fuck him, as if it’s the most natural thing he’s ever done.

‘Are you sure you want me to knot you?’ Steve asks, solicitous as ever. ‘We don’t have to, you’ve given me enough jerk-off material for the rest of my life so-’

Bucky starts sniggering then, which probably isn’t very sexy, but then Steve starts laughing too. Then he feels him get on the bed behind Bucky, and suddenly Bucky isn’t laughing any more. ‘Fuck me,’ he says. ‘I want to come on your knot.’

Steve makes a sound which is more a growl than anything else, parts Bucky’s ass, and slides in, Bucky gasps with it, Steve’s long slide in to the hilt, braces himself, lets his metal arm take most of his weight, desperately screwing himself back onto Steve’s dick. ‘I’m not going to last long,’ Steve warns. 

‘Fuck me harder,’ Bucky insists, high on Steve’s scent, the feel of him, his voice, his hands, his thick dick splitting Bucky open.

Steve pounds into him now, hard and fast, holding Bucky’s hips tight enough to bruise, and Bucky can feel his knot swell up, impossibly big, catching on his rim and then inside, pushing in, sealing them, as Steve starts to pump him full of come. He’s moaning, saying ‘fuck’ and ‘so tight’ and ‘beautiful’ and then Steve slumps forward and starts kissing him all over his back. Steve rolls them so they’re spooning, him behind Bucky, his hard dick still spurting come, Bucky swearing he can feel it inside him, throbbing and shooting. Starts to push back against it.

‘Shh, shh,’ Steve says, lets his hand slip down to Bucky’s aching dick, jerks him off. ‘I’ve got you, it’s okay, I’m going to take care of you.’ Weirdly, as much as his filthy promises earlier it gets Bucky off, just the loose feel of Steve’s hand on his dick, the feel of Steve still coming in his ass, his promises: it’s enough to make him come, again. 

‘Fuck that’s a workout,’ Bucky says, at last, when he can breathe.

Steve chuckles against his shoulder, tightens his arms around him, kisses along his ear, his neck. 

‘Hey, you lost your virginity,’ Bucky points out, suddenly, absurdly pleased with himself. ‘The hundred-year-old virgin no more.’

‘You were worth the wait,’ Steve whispers against his ear, nipping at it. ‘I love you.’

‘I love you, too,’ Bucky says, experimentally tightening his muscles to see if Steve responds. He does, sighing into Bucky.

‘How long til your knot goes down?’ Bucky asks. ‘I could really do with a shower.’

‘You romantic,’ Steve says. ‘It’s enforced pillow-talk for you, it could be anywhere between thirty minutes and an hour, so you just have to lie here, let me tell you how sexy you are, how I’m going to look after you.’

Bucky’s traitorous heart feels like it can barely beat, it’s so full. Maybe it’s just the hormones, he wonders, but he knows it’s more than that, knows it’s the fulfilment of something he’s secretly wanted, for as long as he can remember. 

Steve’s hands are everywhere, along his chest, his sides, his thighs, rubbing his nipples, his arms, telling him how good he is, how hot he is, how much Steve loves him, how much he wants him. Bucky lets him, drinks it in, draws it over himself like a blanket. ‘I could fall asleep like this,’ he admits.

‘You can, Buck. I’ve got you,’ Steve whispers, kisses his earlobe. He closes his eyes, lets himself relax, breathe deeply. 

‘I feel like I’ve come home,’ Bucky says, and, sticky, sated, happy, lets himself fall asleep.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Boys weren’t omegas. Not outside of blue movies, or bluer songs, at least, the kind of anecdotes too ribald even for soldiers to tell. Girls were omegas, sometimes, but rarely, even in those days. Dying breeds, he guessed. When he was the asset it had stopped entirely, he had thought it all over: feels sick thinking of what they would have done to exploit him if he had suffered back then. But now, 2014, eating three meals a day, sleeping regularly in a safe bed, the old ghost has come back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Write the a/b/o fic you want to see in the world. Set after The Winter Soldier.
> 
> The title comes from Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse. FINAL CHAPTER! From Steve's POV.

Steve lets Bucky sleep, revelling in the feel of Bucky relaxed in his arms, soft and pliant, so unlike he normally is. When Steve can finally pull himself free of Bucky he gets up, goes to the bathroom, ties off the condom and throws it. He runs Bucky a bath, opens all the cupboards, tries to find something sweet smelling and foamy to pour in, settles on dumping shampoo in the water.

He then goes to the kitchen, drinks an entire pint of milk, pours Bucky a glass of Lucozade, cuts him a generous slice of cake. Carries them through to the bathroom.

He stretches, experimentally, winces as his muscles protest. He feels fantastic, though, happy and satisfied and safe. Bucky came to find him. Bucky wants to be with him. They had sex. They will have sex again. Bucky wants to be with him. 

Bucky’s awake when he makes it back to the bedroom, sitting up in bed, grimacing.

Steve’s kneeling in front of him in a moment, immediately concerned out of all proportion. ‘Are you okay? Do you regret it? Should I-’ He breaks off suddenly, sprints back to the bathroom and turns off the taps over the nearly overflowing bath. There’s bubbles everywhere. He’s runs right back into the bedroom, back to Bucky.

Bucky eyeballs him, ‘You want to calm down, Steve? You’re gonna give me whiplash. I was making a face because, having not been _fucked in the ass_ before, my ass is sore.’ He seems to take great pleasure in enunciating the words, watching Steve squirm.

Normally, Steve would capitulate immediately, go rosy red, look away, stammer. But not this time. He leans in, captures Bucky’s chin between forefinger and thumb. ‘You’re saying your ass is sore because of my big, _alpha_ , dick?’

Bucky looks so shocked that Steve can’t keep a straight face for more than a minute, starts laughing. Bucky sounds scandalised, ‘One night with me and you’re talking like a porn star?’

‘Seriously, though,’ Steve sits next to him on the bed, hand tracing circles on Bucky’s knee. ‘Was it okay?’

‘I came three times, you know it was okay,’ Bucky won’t look at him, hair down like a curtain across his face. Then he turns, captures Steve’s mouth in a sweet kiss. ‘It was everything I never knew I wanted.’

Steve leans into it for a moment, before pulling back. ‘I ran you a bath. And got you snacks. You’re going into heat and you need to take care of yourself.’ He corrects himself, ‘You need me to take care of you.’

‘I don’t _need_ you to do anything,’ Bucky bridles, pokes Steve in the ribs, glares. ‘But I sort of want you to take care of me right now. I’m tired, and hot. A bath sounds nice.’ He stands up, stretches, watches Steve watching him. Steve can tell he likes being watched by Steve – his dick’s already getting hard again.

‘Do you want me to carry you?’ Steve asks, hopefully. He liked carrying Bucky, liked the feel of him nestled in his arms, his hands twined around Steve’s neck.

Bucky weighs it up. ‘Are you gonna be like this all the time?’

‘Probably,’ Steve says, unrepentantly.

Bucky grins then, toothy and wide. ‘Well, make the most of it while I’m in the honeymoon stage, Rogers.’ He lets Steve pick him up again, widens his eyes, bats his eyelashes, until Steve snickers, nearly has to put him down in case he drops him.

Bucky eyes the bath. ‘Got enough foam?’ Steve can admit, on reflection, that he may have gone slightly overboard with the bubbles. But once Bucky’s in the bath, lying back, eyes closed, he stops complaining.

‘Does it feel good?’

‘Yeah,’ Bucky says, simply, luxuriating in it.

‘Can I wash your hair?’ Steve asks. ‘It’s so long now. I like it.’

Bucky cracks an eyelid, ‘You’re not mourning that short back and sides I used to have? You used to love watching me do my quiff in the mornings.’

‘I’ll like any hair you have,’ Steve answers, truthfully, kneeling by the bath. He’s still naked, sort of hopes Bucky’s going to invite him to get in there with him, even though he doubts it can handle the combined bulk of two supersoldiers. ‘But I like it longer.’ He combs his fingers through it, reaches for the shampoo, lathers it up, rubbing Bucky’s scalp.

‘I can’t ever remember anyone touching me like this,’ Bucky says. 

‘I’d have washed your hair back then,’ Steve insists. 

‘I know.’

Steve doesn’t like to think that much about what Bucky’s been through. He made himself read all the details in the files, learn what happened, what the winter soldier experienced. But it doesn’t mean he has to like thinking about it. What it must have been like to be abused for so long, to never experience a gentle touch, to be treated like a weapon, nothing more.

‘Duck,’ he says, when he’s done massaging, and Bucky does, obediently, submerges under the water, shakes his head when he comes up, soapy and laughing.

He picks up the flannel, runs it over Bucky’s face, to make him swear and close his eyes, down over his chest, under the water, rubs it loosely over Bucky’s dick.

‘You think I need particular washing there?’ Bucky asks, obviously amused.

‘I think you’re a very dirty boy,’ Steve says, to startle a laugh out of Bucky, who obliges right away. Steve kisses Bucky’s forehead, huffs at him behind his ear, can still scent Bucky even over the shampoo and the clean water. ‘You’re going to be in heat tonight, you need to rest up now.’

‘Alright,’ Bucky shrugs, surprisingly obedient. Steve had expected a fight. 

Bucky stands up, all 6 foot of him, muscled and broad and, strangely beautiful, Steve thinks. Steve stays kneeling for a moment, because it sort of feels appropriate, to let Bucky tower over him otherworldly and magnificent. And then the moment is broken because Bucky deliberately shakes his wet hair all over Steve, like a dog does, and Steve grabs a towel and manhandles Bucky into it, throws him over the shoulder where he kicks and wails until Steve throws him down in bed.

They’re both laughing, Steve feels breathless with it, oddly teary all of a sudden. He goes to get the cake and Lucozade, spoon feeds the cake to Bucky who doesn’t protest, eats it dutifully, only stops to lick Steve’s fingers, his knuckles, suck the pad of his thumb, but otherwise behaves. 

‘You’re going to sleep now?’ Steve asks, tucks him under the blankets. 

Bucky rolls his eyes, ‘Yes, ma, I promise.’ But he closes his eyes obediently, and falls asleep right away. Steve uses the opportunity to borrow some boxers and a t-shirt from his drawers, gets side-tracked by his laundry hamper and spends minutes inhaling Bucky’s shirt like some kind of creep, before he can get himself under control.

He retreats to the lounge, collects his phone, sees two missed calls from Sam and a text from Natasha.

‘So he found you?’

He texts back right away. ‘Am safe, at Bucky’s. He’s in heat so I’m taking care of him.’

She types back right away, three eggplant emojis and a tongue-out emoji.

He responds with a tongue out emoji and a peach emoji. Then an eggplant emoji and a peach emoji. Then some water droplets for good measure.

She calls him right away, ‘I had to make sure it was you, that no one had stolen your phone.’

‘It’s me,’ he says, trying not to let anything smug creep into his voice. ‘I don’t know what you and Sam said to him but he wants to try your plan.’

‘I’m glad,’ she says. ‘What do you want me to tell S.H.I.E.L.D? I’m assuming you won’t come home tonight.’

‘No,’ he says. ‘Bucky needs me.’

She snorts, ‘I’m sure.’

‘Don’t tell them anything other than that the doctor says I’m still cycling, they don’t need to know more than that. You think they have eyes on me here?’

‘No,’ she says. ‘You’re the most predictable of all of us, why would they. And you saw the doctor today, he said you were going into heat-’

‘It seems to have retreated,’ he tells her. ‘Bucky’s going to, but I’m not, not right now.’

‘Bucky cured you with his magic ass?’ Natasha asks.

‘Something like that,’ he says. ‘He’s sleeping now but I don’t want to leave him. He’s never had anyone look after him before.’

‘No,’ she agrees. ‘I’ll tell Sam you’re alright. Text me tomorrow. And, Steve?’

‘Yeah?’

‘I’m happy for you.’

After she’s rung off he feels full of energy, even though by rights he should be exhausted. He does push-ups, planks, mountain-climbers, pull-ups from the pull-up bar, then showers until the hot water runs out. He goes in to check on Bucky and can immediately tell he’s coming into heat – he’s sweating and the scent is coming off him in waves, his pheromones making Steve want to protect him, to hold him, to fuck him.

‘You okay, Buck?’ 

‘I’m just so hot, Steve,’ Bucky smiles weakly, kicks off the sheet. 

‘You want ice?’

‘I want you,’ Bucky says.

‘You need ice,’ Steve says, as if he hasn’t heard him, leaving the room while he still can. He’s not sure how he feels about sex while Bucky is on heat, if that’s okay, if he’s taking advantage in some way.

He returns with a pint of ice water, and a cold flannel, which he swipes ineffectually over Bucky’s body, his throat growing dry at the sight of the sheen on his muscles, the way he writhes.

‘I want to have sex with you,’ Bucky says, finally, after one particularly showy stretch. 

‘Yes,’ Steve busies himself with tidying the room, making sure Bucky has drinks with electrolytes in.

‘So… I want to have sex with you, you want to have sex with me… and therefore we have sex?’ Bucky catches Steve’s hand, forces him to make eye contact. ‘You were pretty enthusiastic about the sex before. Or was once enough?’

‘No, it’s,’ Steve stumbles over the words, ‘you’re on heat. It feels a bit like taking advantage.’

Bucky snorts. ‘Okay, so even though I love you, and I want to have sex with you all the time, it’s not okay if I’m on heat, which, let’s be honest, is when having sex with you is sort of helpful for my all-round wellbeing?’ 

‘Yeah, but, you can’t really know what you want,’ Steve tries.

‘So you get to decide when I have sex? Because from the perspective of the person who’s spent most of his life with others deciding when he gets to do anything, that’s kind of bullshit.’ Bucky’s smile is his most dangerous smile, the one which means if Steve doesn’t back down – for once – he’s going to end up out on his ass.

‘I’m sorry,’ Steve settles on, kisses Bucky’s forehead, smoothes his hair away. ‘I’m sorry for being a jackass. This is just very new and-’

‘-and you’re used to me running away from anything that reminds either of us I’m omega,’ Bucky finishes, captures Steve’s fingers, kisses them like a promise.

‘Well, yes,’ Steve strokes across Bucky’s lower lip thoughtfully. ‘I still can’t quite believe you’re here, that I’m here, that we’re going to do this.’

‘I might be a really bad Captain America,’ Bucky warns. ‘Fury might not think this is a good idea. Things can go wrong, still, you know that.’

But there’s no heat in his words, he’s so languid, kissing Steve’s palm, letting Steve stroke down his side, fingers dancing over the scar tissue on his shoulder, down to his hip, rubbing soothing circles designed to provoke.

Bucky takes Steve’s hand then, brings it down to his cock, hard and leaking, until Steve gets the picture and starts jerking him off, gently, taking breaks for long kisses while Bucky moans into his mouth. He has dreamed about Bucky like this for what feels like forever, relaxed in his arms, letting Steve take his fill of his body. Steve’s hard again but it feels irrelevant: he wants to make Bucky feel good. He lets go of Bucky’s dick and wriggles down the bed, pulls Bucky’s legs further open, pushes two fingers inside him.

‘That feels so good, Steve,’ Bucky says, his hands on Steve’s shoulders. Steve licks Bucky’s dick, lets the head rest heavy and swollen on his lower lip, as Bucky looks down at him. Bucky’s pheromones fill the room, Steve feels weak with it, like the only thing holding him together is Bucky’s fingertips on his back, his hand in Steve’s hair.

Laps at the head of his dick, takes it in his mouth, gently, sucks him, starts to hesitantly slide his mouth up and down, won’t let Bucky look away just gazes up at him. 

Bucky rocks against his hand, and he slides his fingers in and out as a counterpoint, can feel how soaking Bucky is, doesn’t need to move much before Bucky starts coming, pulsing in his mouth, and he swallows it all, licks Bucky clean. Bucky doesn’t soften at all, even when Steve lets him slip from his mouth, keeps finger fucking him.

‘Was that alright?’ he asks, but he’s asking smugly, he knows the answer.

‘Yes, yes, Steve, will you fuck me, and bite me, and knot me,’ Bucky doesn’t sound like himself now, maybe the orgasm frays his self-control more, but Steve soothes his frantic words with a kiss, sucking on Bucky’s tongue, sliding his fingers in and out, in and out, of Bucky’s wet hole.

He grabs a condom, rolls it down – proudly doesn’t need help this time – and lies behind Bucky, slides in in one smooth thrust, cannot believe how wet Bucky is, how good he tastes, how good he smells. That Bucky is his, that he can hold him like this, fuck into him, bite Bucky’s shoulder and suck bruises into the skin, roll his hips into him in a slow burn as Bucky says ‘please’ and ‘Steve’ and ‘yes’, like a litany.

He holds Bucky’s hips, feels himself getting closer, his knot swell up, pushes easily into Bucky, seals them together, lets Bucky rock and shiver on his dick, comes for what feels like forever, as Bucky spills over his own stomach, clenching tightly on Steve. 

*** 

Bucky’s heat lasts three days, and by the end of it Steve is exhausted, has gone from having no sex to having ‘all of the sex’ as he texts Natasha who asks what he’s doing, and where he is.

He texts the doctor too, ‘I’m okay, we’re okay. I’ll be with you as normal this week.’

Bucky sweats, and whines, and wants to be knotted, and to be kissed, and petted, and for Steve to not leave the flat _at all_ even when they run out of food, and Steve has to deliveroo in Nando’s.

They make out a lot, and Steve draws him – sprawled, naked, hard, on his hands and knees, hair over his face, curled at Steve’s feet. Steve doesn’t think he’ll ever get over having him like this, being able to touch Bucky whenever he wants. He reminds himself that once he goes back to D.C. it’ll be different, that Bucky will be hidden, that Steve will still have to do his duties, still have to be on show, and kiss babies, and make bland statements about politics, and live his life in public again. But there will always be Bucky, hidden but safe, or right in front of the cameras, face hidden by the Captain America mask, atoning for everything he regrets.

Bucky after a heat is softer than Steve thought he would be, dreamy almost. He asks a lot of ‘do you remember’ questions and Steve is happy to oblige.

‘Do you remember when you got suspended for fighting?’

Yes, Steve remembers all three occasions, until he got smarter in who he took on at least.

‘Do you remember when I tried to grow a moustache?’

Yes, Steve thought it was awful, one of the only things ever to have dampened his lust for Bucky.

‘Do you remember when we shared a tent in France, and you taught me dirty songs?’

Always, one of Steve’s most polished memories, of the easy camaraderie, before Bucky had been lost to him.

It’s as if Bucky can’t bear to not be touching Steve: stroking his hair, holding his hand, curling up neatly against his legs, draping himself over Steve’s lap. Steve feels spoiled, almost jealous of himself, almost embarrassed by the riches of this warmth and affection, after feeling trapped in a half-life for so long.

‘Do you think people wonder where you are?’ Bucky asks, day four, when Steve still hasn’t left.

‘Sam says the doctor has been in touch with Dr Yoon, everyone thinks I’m holed up and on heat. I can probably stretch this out another week and then I have to go back.’

Bucky sighs, ‘I don’t like remembering that a world exists outside of this flat.’

‘No,’ Steve agrees. ‘But we have each other, now, and no matter where we go, or what happens, you’re my world.’

Bucky squeezes his hand. ‘You think it’ll work out?’

‘I think I’ll go home, I’ll fight some fights, you’ll fight some fights, and then Captain America will take a long holiday in Canada, in a cabin in the middle of nowhere.’

Bucky sighs happily. ‘That sounds nice.’

‘You can’t wear any clothes in the cabin,’ Steve continues, as if Bucky hasn’t interrupted. ‘And you’ll grow your hair even longer, so I can tug on it, and hold it, whenever I want.’

‘Oh really?’

‘Yeah, those are the cabin rules,’ Steve shrugs. ‘What can I say, I don’t make ‘em.’

‘Huh. Seems to me you have sex for the first time and you turn into a total deviant. Hey, what am I saying, you were always a total deviant… It’s just everyone else always buys into those big blue eyes, don’t they?’

‘Well I could never fool you,’ Steve agrees, and captures Bucky’s mouth in a kiss.

*** 

The hospital visit is fine.

Doctor MacGregor takes all his readings and tells Steve his hormones are back to baseline. ‘You’ve stopped cycling.’

Steve grins, ‘I guess I have. Your theory was right.’

‘It was, wasn’t it,’ he smiles, rubs his chin. ‘I quite enjoy being proven right. But mostly, as an old romantic, I enjoy a happy ending.’

‘I think it’ll be a happy ending,’ Steve says. ‘I’m optimistic.’

‘Do you want me to tell your people you need another week? I can probably fudge your results until then, claim a lab mix-up. The joys of hospital bureaucracy are such that it’s very plausible that we might lose your results, very plausible indeed.’ His eyes twinkle, his smile bitten down.

‘I’d like another week,’ Steve admits. ‘I don’t get a break from being Captain America very much.’

‘You’ll take my advice on suppressants? I’d like to see you take a break for heats, now and then.’

‘Yeah, I’m going to rent a cabin in Canada, nice and cold, see them out there, in private.’

‘Good, I’m glad to hear it. I’m seeing Kirk later, and I’ll give him the same advice I gave you. Canada is a lovely place I hear.’

‘Yes,’ Steve says, ‘it is. Though, anywhere’s lovely if you’re with the right person.’

‘Young love,’ Doctor MacGregor sounds starry-eyed.

‘I’m older than you are, doc,’ Steve reminds him, and he laughs, shakes Steve’s hand. ‘It was a pleasure to meet you. Do come back and see me again, please. I’m always happy to fabricate a fertility issue for you. You have my private number.’

‘I will never forget what you have done, sir,’ Steve shakes his hand, feels inadequately able to express himself.

‘Good luck, to both of you,’ he says.

Steve’s still smiling to himself when he leaves the room, but it quickly falls from his face. Sam is loitering in the corridor outside, catches Steve’s elbow, pulls him into an empty examination room.

‘Hey, what’s going on, is it Bucky?’ He’s alert immediately, ready for a fight.

‘No, yes, it’s complicated,’ Sam rubs his chin, looks away. ‘Natasha found List, and Fletcher, but not before they spotted Bucky.’

‘They ran?’

Sam nods, ‘We were lucky until now, but you can only rely on luck for so long, even in a hospital this size.’ 

‘Where are they? Will we catch them? Who will they tell?’ His words trip over themselves in his haste to spit them out.

‘They’ve not had a chance to tell anyone, Bucky knocked them out cold, they’re tied up in an old squat by the river. They’ve not come around yet.’

‘Can you take me there?’

‘Natasha’s with him, he’s not done anything crazy, okay, Steve? We can figure this out.’

‘They wake up and he’s there, whatever we do with them, they’ll start the search for Bucky all over again.’

‘It’s too late for that, Steve, they saw him, they can’t see you too, there’s no way they can link you to him. A sighting of us makes this much more complex.’

‘So what, we don’t go?’

‘We go, but we hang back, we’ve not got much choice. You can’t charge in there and fix this.’

Steve feels sick – like the past week has been a dream and he’s finally woken up to his reality. Like he was an idiot to believe it could ever turn out differently.

Bucky’s sat outside in the corridor when they get there, Natasha leaning against the wall next to him. The building is derelict but there’s other signs of human life, some trash, some old clothes piled up. Bucky’s smoking, eyes fixed on his boots. He looks up when Steve gets there, some of the tension seems to roll out of his shoulders. He puts the cigarette out, crushes it under his heel.

‘They awake yet?’ Steve asks.

‘Nope, out cold,’ Bucky says. ‘I figure I leave them here and run.’

‘Go to Fury,’ Sam suggests. ‘You’ll just have to disappear faster than we planned, but he’ll get you out of the country, wait until it calms down again.’

‘I spent years waiting for the heat to die down, as soon as they tell someone I’m here, they spotted me, it stirs up attention again. And enough people know you were at that hospital for questions to be asked.’

Steve feels hollowed out, weary to the bone. Natasha’s hand on his elbow keeps him upright. 

‘I want to ask them some things,’ Bucky says. ‘I won’t hurt them just… I want to know how they did it, why they did it, how they got this job. Someone is still pulling strings for them. And then I’ll go. I’ll find you, Steve, one day, when I’m a ghost story again.’ Steve wants to fight him, to tell him no, but he knows the set of Bucky’s shoulders, knows that he was stupid to believe in happy endings. 

The three of them wait in the corridor, silent, Natasha laces her fingers in his, watching Bucky walk through the door, full of deadly grace, a soldier again.

They can only hear snatches of the conversation, but there’s not much being said: List and his compatriot seem well-versed in the art of silence, and if Bucky won’t hurt them, they clearly have no plans to speak.

‘Who got you this job?’ His tone is robotic, not like the laughing voice Steve has heard this past week, the voice which has teased him, whispered sweet nothings in his hear, begged him.

‘How long have you been here?’

‘Who do you answer to?’

And then, saddest of all, ‘How could you hurt me? How could you pretend I wasn’t human?’

‘You weren’t human,’ one of them says, finally. ‘You _aren’t_ human. You are the asset. You are a weapon, clad in flesh, nothing more. I would think nothing of hurting a dog, nothing of the feelings of a gun, would I? That is how we felt about you.’

Steve punches a wall then, feels his fist go through it, doesn’t care. Thinks of Bucky’s notebooks, his smile coming back, him slow-dancing with Steve in his kitchen, more grind than anything. 

‘I am human,’ Bucky says, after the silence stretches too long, voice shaky but strong. ‘I am human and you cannot hurt me any longer. Either of you.’

Then they hear nothing at all. Natasha and Sam look at each other, then to Steve.

‘Do we go in?’ 

Steve doesn’t know, doesn’t know what he’ll be walking into if he goes through that door, doesn’t know if he can face the Winter Soldier again, see the blankness in Bucky’s eyes as he confronts his past.

But the door opens and it’s not the asset emerging: Bucky’s coming out, eyes red, comes straight into Steve’s arms, nestles into Steve’s neck.

‘They’re dead,’ he says, finally.

‘You killed them?’ Steve asks, nothing censorious in the question, part of him relieved.

‘L-pills,’ Bucky says. ‘I was stupid not to check.’

But he wasn’t stupid, was he? He was clever, because dead men don’t tell tales.

‘I’ll call it in,’ Natasha says, eventually, watching Bucky cry. ‘I’ll say I thought they were following Steve, that we fought, that they killed themselves before I could call the cops. Two fewer Hydra agents out there, no one’s going to care. And no one’s going to know about Bucky. You go to Fury as planned, Barnes, and you disappear.’

Bucky doesn’t lift his head from Steve’s neck, like he’s trying to inhale him, to imprint Steve’s scent on every part of his being. Steve’s murmuring soothing nonsense, kissing the top of his head, stroking his hand down Bucky’s side as he shakes. Steve knows he’s trembling as well, the adrenaline, the fear of losing Bucky again so raw.

‘Hey, you go back to hospital, you see the doctor, and you come home to me. We don’t need a big goodbye, it’s just au revoir, Buck,’ he whispers.

‘I thought I was gonna lose you,’ Bucky says. ‘And I couldn’t stand it.’

‘You’re never going to lose me again, I promise. This is it, pal. I’m with you until the end of the line, remember?’

‘That’s my line,’ Bucky says, but he looks up, finally, kisses Steve, ignores Natasha and Sam’s gawping. ‘You never seen super-soldiers make out before?’ he says, and the delivery’s off but if he’s trying to make a joke Steve knows he’ll be okay.

‘I’ve lived a sheltered life, man,’ Sam quips.

Bucky smiles, slowly. ‘Well you’re going to have to get used to it. Because our future involves a lot of making out. I’ve got decades to make up for.’

Natasha wrinkles her nose, but Steve just grins, and grins.

***  
EPILOGUE

Steve watches the fight from the television in his cabin. Captain America, Black Widow and Falcon, on the Harvard campus of all places, because of some stupid kid in the science department experimenting with something weird that’s turned him into living lava.

‘You think you’ve seen it all,’ Steve mutters, changing the channel. He knows how this one ends. It was a week ago, but it’s being endlessly replayed: Falcon is a fan favourite, and when Cap throws him the flame extinguisher, it’s a great set-piece. Bucky looks good, Steve thinks. He fights well. He last saw him several months ago, just after he got back from London, but Steve’s being patient, waiting, revelling in the holiday from being a superhero.

There’s a knock at the door then and Steve goes to answer it, letting Bucky in from the snow. ‘Fuck, it’s freezing,’ he says.

‘Canada,’ Steve shrugs. ‘But the fire’s real toasty.’

Bucky unzips his parka, and sheds his clothes, layer upon layer until he’s completely naked. Steve goes to touch him but Bucky stops him, fumbles with his hair-tie until his (stupid) man-bun comes out, shakes his hair until it’s loose around his shoulders.

‘Now, I’m an old man, Rogers,’ Bucky says. ‘So my memory _might_ be going, but I’m pretty sure the rules of the cabin are no clothes, and hair available for grabbing.’

Steve can’t answer, doesn’t dare speak because his throat feels so thick, so he answers the best way he knows how – by putting his hand over Bucky’s heart (which belongs to him) and by kissing him, in a way which means ‘I love you’ and ‘I can’t live without you’.

And maybe those old alpha/omega legends about bonds do have some truth in them after all, because it’s like Bucky hears him, unspoken though it is. ‘I know,’ he says, against Steve’s mouth. ‘You’re mine, Rogers.’ And Steve feels like he’s coming back to life, like the years are falling away as they kiss, until he’s young and stupid again – falling for Bucky, not even considering what the future will bring. Here they are, together, decades later, and maybe it’s just an accident of time, but right now, it feels like fate.

It feels like coming home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sticking with me! I only ever write romcoms so this was a stretch, but I so enjoyed it. Thank you for all of the encouraging comments which enabled me to finally explore my fascination with abo societal dynamics - outside of sex - like a giant nerd.


End file.
